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Here a Little 

AND 

There a Little 



ESSAYS, SKETCHES AND DETACHED 
THOUGHTS 



BY 



ANNE W. MAYLIN 




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PHILADELPHIA 

PORTER & COATKS 









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CONTENTS. 



Page 

Preface 5 

Introductory — Sonnet 1 1 

The Value of a Cultivated Intellectual Taste 13 

A Shelf in my Bookcase 18 

Thoughts on Genius 24 

Our Buried Griefs 30 

A Leaf from the Book of Real Life 33 

The Pleasures and Pains connected with Teaching 43 

Justice and Humanity to the Brute Creation 60 

My Father's Old Age 66 

The Faults of Others, and Our Own 71 

The Intellectual and Religious Enjoyment of Nature 75 

Every-day Example 81 

The Swallows 86 

Early Influence 89 

Our Social Dependences 97 

The Sin of Intellectual Selfishness loi 

Personal Recollections of a Real Childhood ........ 105 

Working for Jesus 139 

Detached Thoughts 145 

"Alone, yet not alone " 172 

" Have I been so long time with thee ? " 173 

"Is it I?" 175 

" Silver and gold have I none " 177 

" In His Name." 179 

Spirit 182. 

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PREFACE 



IT seems fitting that this little book should contain 
a short sketch of the author. Anne Walter 
Maylin was born in London, England, on the 19th 
of September, 1806. She was the eldest child and 
only daughter of Thomas and Sarah Walter Maylin, 
there being two younger brothers, Charles and Edward, 
whom she outlived. She was a remarkably precocious 
child, having learned her alphabet between the ages 
of eighteen and twenty months, and being able to read 
and write correspondingly early. When very young 
she was in the habit of writing little books containing 
original verses, stories, dialogues, puzzles, riddles, etc., 
for the amusement and instruction of her brothers, 
which were remarkable for one of her years. A few 
of her letters are subjoined, the first one being written 
before she attained her seventh year; it and the others 
are in a round childish hand, in very large characters : 

August 22nd, 18 ij. 
My Dear Mamma : I will try always to be a good girl, and I hope 
to improve. I sometimes go up stairs and think how wrong I must have 
been in being so unkind to you ; sometimes I cry about it when I am 
in bed. I pray'd yesterday that God might bless you and make me 
a good child. A. W. Maylin. 

(5) 



PREFACE. 

She was rather more than eight years old when she 
wrote the following one : 

December 2jth, 1814. 
Dear Mamma : I am now commencing a subject painful in itself 
to write upon, but, owing to some circumstances connected with it, a 
more pleasing topic. It is — O ! I think you will guess — the government 
of my temper. I was thinking about it a good deal yesterday morning, 
when my brothers were playing in their room, and I was down stairs by 
myself. When my brothers came down to their books, Charles did 
something which caused my temper to rise, and I felt very much 
inclined to speak crossly to him ; but I tried to restrain myself from 
uttering a word, because I knew, that if I spoke, my passion would grow 
stronger, and I should then have lost all control over it. Though it was 
very difficult to do this, I accomplished it, but the struggle was so great, 
that it gave me an aching pain at my heart and forced tears from my 
eyes. Something else in the course of the morning occurred to try 
my temper, but the conflict between my passions and my duty was not 
so painful as before. The itching of my chilblains in the evening made 
me speak angrily to my brothers, but when I had reflected, it made me 
cry a great deal, although you did not perceive it. — It seems surprising 
to me, that, though I have formed such good resolutions, and though my 
wish to get the better of my temper is so sincere, I am wanting in 
Perseverance. Some time ago, in a letter to you on this subject, I told 
you, that I had a greater wish than ever to get the better of it, but, had 

1 greater Perseverance than ever ? I fear not. — It is a difficult task to 
part with long cherished errors. I assure you, dear mamma, it often 
makes me very unhappy when I think of it. I will dismiss the subject 
for the present, but I will write you on New Year's Day and renew it. — 
Dear mamma, I am sorry that your other avocations do not permit you 
to write to me now and then. I pray God to enable me to get the better 
of my temper; (He knows my wish is sincere) and to strengthen me with 
Perseverance. Dear mamma, I remain your affectionate daughter, 

Ann. 

The punctuation is her own, and there was not a 
misspelled word in the letter. 



PREFACE. 7 

In the article called " Personal Recollections of a 
Real Childhood," Miss Maylin gives a correct and 
graphic history of her own childhood. During the 
visit to Dover, of which she speaks as having occurred 
in her seventh year, her father writes to her mother : 
" Our dear darling was delighted when at Gravesend 
to see the river and the shipping. * What will Charles 
say to this?' 'I wish dear mamma was with us.' 
Dear little treasure, she is always thinking of you. 
Whenever it rained, as it did several times, she would 
say : ' I hope, papa, it does not rain where mamma is, 
because she might think it rained here as well, and 
she would be so uneasy.' Whenever she sees any- 
thing striking it is, * I shall mind to tell mamma of 
that.' . . . They are all extremely delighted with 
her as well as surprised at her attainments ; and here, 
my beloved S., I must express to you the high gratifi- 
cation it gives me to witness their great admiration so 
justly reflected back upon yourself, for the unwearied 
and persevering care and attention which you must 
have paid to her — a memento that stamps a lasting 
impression of worth on your amiable character, a 
jewel of far more intrinsic value than all the gaudy 
trinkets that vanity or fashion can deck itself with." 

In 1 8 17 the family came to this country and settled 
in Gloucester Co., New Jersey. After a residence of 
five years in Woodbury, Mr. and Mrs. Maylin removed 
to Ohio, and the pleasant home being thus broken up, 



8 PREFACE. 

the family separated, never again to be reunited under 
the same roof. Anne, having commenced her work 
of teaching before the completion of her eighteenth 
year, remained in Woodbury, afterward removing to 
Salem, N. J., where she spent the rest of her life. 
The separation was keenly felt by them all, as they 
were a remarkably united, affectionate family, with 
great congeniality of taste and feeling. They were 
not rich in worldly goods, but possessed great cult- 
ure and refinement and a vast fund of varied and 
useful information. Mrs. Maylin was a woman of 
uncommon intellectual ability and of strong religious 
principles, possessing the power of impressing her 
own tastes and feelings upon the minds of her chil- 
dren. The early education of these children was 
conducted at home, chiefly under her care, though 
the father gave as much assistance as was consistent 
with the time and attention necessarily paid to his 
business. 

Miss Maylin was a very successful and competent 
teacher, being remarkable for her great thoroughness 
and exactness. She taught in Salem nearly twenty 
years, when failing health obliged her to resign her 
school into other hands. She formed friendships with 
many of her scholars that only ended with their death 
or her own. 

Her religious feelings were awakened at an early 
age, accompanied by a very tender conscience, and in 



PREFACE. 9 

later life she carried out unshrinkingly her own con- 
victions of duty, often in the face of great opposition. 
Her religion was eminently a practical one, and she 
took an active part in works of benevolence and 
charity. She was for forty years secretary to the 
first Benevolent Society established in Salem. She 
organized a society for furnishing the poor with fuel, 
and for twenty-five winters collected all the necessary 
funds herself, as well as attended to the purchase and 
distribution thereof She was greatly interested in 
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 
contributing liberally to it both her time and means. 
When quite young she connected herself with the 
Presbyterian Church, but after a time, feeling she could 
not subscribe to all its doctrines, she requested a Letter 
of Dismissal. She then joined the Methodist Church, 
remaining a member of that body as long as she lived, 
teaching until within a year of her death an adult class 
in the Sunday-school. 

She possessed '' the pen of a ready writer," and 
contributed a great many articles in prose and verse 
to various newspapers and magazines, under different 
signatures, such as Fidus, Verus, Laicus, etc., though 
her favorite one was that of her initials, A. W. M. 
She collected some of her poems and published them 
in a volume called Lays of Many Hours. The present 
collection she prepared some time ago, many of the 
articles having previously appeared in print, and left 



lO . PREFACE. 

a request that they be published in book form after 
her death. 

Her eyesight remained almost unimpaired, and she 
was always able to read quite fine print without the 
aid of glasses. Her health and strength were also 
remarkably preserved, so that she could take walks 
after she was eighty which many younger women 
would have been unable to do. Her mental powers, 
too, remained bright and active until within a short 
period of her death, especially her excellent memory, 
which had been so carefully trained by her parents 
and herself 

Her faith and trust and reliance " upon Him who 
is alone able to help " remained with her to the last, 
though she passed through some months of great 
suffering, which ended with her death on the 19th 
of October, 1889, shortly after the completion of her 
eighty-third year. H. 

Salem, February, 1890. 



INTRODUCTORY. 



Sonnet. 



LAUGH with the gay, and echo back their glee ; 
Jest with the merry ; trifle with the crowd : 
Hide thy interior self : be not too proud 
A fool amid surrounding fools to be : 
Earth's honor thou shalt win abundantly, 

And men thy happy gifts shall laud and prize 
With ready will. But be thou truly wise, 
And lo ! their love and praise are not for thee : 
For far too deeply and too mournfully 

Sweep o'er their hearts thy heart's fine sympathies. 
Yet thou hast kindred : spirits from the skies 
Whisper the converse of Eternity ; 

And answer, with a fellowship divine. 
The hidden chords and mysteries in thine. 



(^0 



THE VALUE OF A CULTIVATED INTEL- 
LECTUAL TASTE. 



Ah ! who can tell the triumphs of the mind 
By Truth illumined, and by Taste refined ? 

Pleasures of Memory, 

THE value of such an acquaintance with general 
literature as, under a correct moral influence, 
enriches, enlarges and dignifies the mind of its posses- 
sor, is almost inestimable. It is not merely a famil- 
iarity with a few celebrated authors, or even with a 
variety of them. It is not simply to have " trippingly 
on the tongue " the records of history, the technicali- 
ties of science and art, or the delineations and dialect 
of the most popular pages of taste and imagination. It 
comprises something more. It is that kind of intimacy 
with the thoughts and feelings of those who have in- 
structed and refined the world, that incorporates the 
impressions of theirs in a measure with the current of 
our own, and thus causes a thousand intellectual gems 
to shine out over the surface of our existence. It is 
that rich store of associations, suggestions, memories, 
which such an acquaintance with the history and pro- 
ductions of the gifted and the good supplies, the mine 

(13) 



14 CULTIVATED INTELLECTUAL TASTE. 

of whose exhaustless affluence is but deepened the 
farther it is wrought, and whose resources are con- 
tinually elicited, both by the things without and within 
us. It is that development of observation and com- 
parison which prompts the intellect to call up spon- 
taneously from the recesses of the past, from all that 
is valuable or beautiful in natural science, or graceful 
in art, combinations and illustrations, which, multiply- 
ing to an infinite extent, continually diversify its ma- 
terials for instruction and entertainment. 

Nor is this a sphere of visionary enjoyment. It is 
something to have the mind so furnished, that it comes 
" with more than present good," to the present scenes 
and occupations of every-day life ; that it penetrates 
into sources of interest and gratification where an un- 
cultivated perception would have discovered none. It 
is sovietJiing to find in the simple passages, the little 
traits of our ordinary being, mere trifles " shine by 
situation ;" by connection with those hidden links 
which they touch in the electric chain of our own 
thoughts, memories and feelings. 

But are these habits of mind useful in their practical 
influences? Do they enable us to prosecute with 
more alacrity and success our real duties ? or does 
their cultivation increase our fitness for the social in- 
tercourse of life ? 

Now, without casting one ungenerous or unkind 
reflection upon this intercourse, it must be allowed to 



CULTIVATED INTELLECTUAL TASTE, 1 5 

be painfully true that it usually calls for but small use 
of these intellectual treasures ; for few are the de- 
mands it makes upon them. They are written on the 
tablet of the mind, as it were, in sympathetic inks ; and 
little of that genial warmth which is needed to bring 
out their characters to life and vividness will meet us 
there. Conversation, in general, is indeed so slightly 
attuned to the spirit of those associations which lift 
the thoughts from the external to the intellectual, that 
we can scarcely hope in its ordinary circles to find 
ourselves much wiser or happier for any interior culti- 
vation beyond that average point, below which we 
should not be on the footing of common mental re- 
spectability. Often must the images ris ing tomemory 
in their own delightful aptitude be enjoyed alone, and 
many a series of suggestions elicited by some casual 
incident repressed, when we feel it would meet no 
companionship. 

Yet we need not " lock the lost wealth," merely be- 
cause we cannot always find ready barter for it. If, in 
the seclusion of retirement, the absence of external 
excitements, the monotony, as it may sometimes seem, 
of those bodily cares which the necessities of our 
being impose on all, we can be innocently happy and 
our understandings profitably active, under circum- 
stances which otherwise might have clouded our path 
with languor or depression, we shall gather an abundant 
harvest for any seed we may have planted in the intel- 



1 6 CULTIVATED INTELLECTUAL TASTE. 

lectual soil Neither shall we find any " surplus reve- 
nue," let us add to the genuine wealth of mind as much 
as we may. Not a single item is there in its uncounted 
treasury but may increase, either directly or indirectly, 
our power of useful influence over other minds, or 
widen the various channels of enjoyment in our own. 
Surely, too, we ought to be sufficiently grateful for 
these privileges, to evince a better spirit under the 
petty disconcertmentsof life, a greater equanimity 
under its minor vexations, conscious as we are of pos- 
sessing within ourselves a retirement from these as 
dignified as it is delightful. 

The fact that such feelings and views are diverse 
from those of many around us must in no degree be 
permitted to render us cynical toward the ordinary 
flow of social interchange, or impatient with its occa- 
sional insipidities. We must not be like Shenstone, 
in his beloved Leasowes, who was angry because his 
neighbors did not appreciate the cool vistas, the re- 
tired grottoes, the shady walks and the inviting bowers, 
which his hand had fondly cultivated, and through 
which, to him, it was such happiness to roam. Rather 
will we be content and grateful that there are pleas- 
ures, by which, under the goodness of God, we are 
rendered independent of their admiration, and for 
which we ask not their eulogy. 

Let us beware of making a misapplication of the 
precious benison of intellectual taste. If ideal refine- 



CULTIVATED INTELLECTUAL TASTE. \J 

ments produce in us a sensitiveness that diminishes 
our readiness to be interested in the welfare and hap- 
piness of others ; if for the patient flow of human 
kindness they substitute the feeUng of indtdged disgust 
toward what is unassimilated to our own pursuits and 
habits, in theirs ; if we cannot turn from " the hght of 
other days" to gentle, active sympathies with the joys 
and sorrows of our own ; then we may justily flee from 
the fascinations of literature and taste, as from those 
of Armida's enchanted garden. 

But these pure and high sources of enjoyment need 
not be thus perverted. They are innocent, when not 
allowed to usurp the place of practical duties. They 
are beneficial, when, refreshed and gladdened by their 
invigorating influences, we can turn more contentedly, 
more joyfully, to the plainest and soberest features of 
our lot. They are ennobling, when they render us 
more cheerful, more patient, more thankful, amid the 
satieties and agitations of life ; more indifferent to 
any part in the petty contests, competitions and jeal- 
ousies of a distracted and jarring world. 




A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE. 



THERE is one shelf in my bookcase which is pretty 
much appropriated to religious biographies, or 
biographies more or less of that character. Side by side 
stand in peaceful proximity the good of various creeds, 
and some of almost no creed, unless the love of God 
and of Christ be deemed such. Whatever may have 
been their speculative differences of opinion, they seem 
to speak very much the same language when the re- 
ligion of the heart and life is their theme. 

In a certain sense I utterly abhor " close commun- 
ion." In another certain sense I glory and rejoice 
in the term. That " close communion " which exists 
between the spirits of the truly wise and good, in all 
ages and under all forms of Christian faith, is a glori- 
ous thing indeed and, blessed be God, a bright reality. 

As I happened the other day to cast my eye on the 
shelf I have mentioned, it ran over the names of many 
whose words and works of piety and love are now 
being rewarded in heaven. 

Here stand records of the brave Christian heroes, 
Whitefield and Wesley, who went into the highways 
and byways, and broke up the fallow ground in re- 

(i8) 



A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE. 1 9 

glons till then inaccessible to religious instruction. 
Next to them is the staunch conservative Church- 
woman, Hannah More, who congratulated herself on 
" never having strayed into a Methodist meeting," 
but who, not to speak of her many excellent writings, 
did for the world even better service than with her 
pen, as she gathered the children and young men and 
women from the destitute places of Somersetshire, and 
by her indefatigable toil, continued through forty 
years, wrought so wonderful a moral reformation in 
her own neighborhood for miles around as had not 
even been attempted by the resident clergy. 

Close to each other (as Whittier once worded it in 
another connection) are the "Quaker and the Priest;" 
that true Christian, Richard Reynolds, of Bristol, 
who held his abounding wealth as indeed '* a loan to 
be repaid with use," and whose main care seemed to 
be so to set flowing the full streams of his bounty, that 
no human eye, if possible, should detect their source; 
humble-minded and deeply spiritual, never presuming 
to talk confidently of acceptance with God, but quietly, 
firmly resting his immortal hopes on the assured good- 
ness of his Heavenly Father, through time and for 
eternity. Beside Richard Reynolds is Frederick W. 
Robertson, the glory, and shall I say also the shame, 
of our age : its glory, because of his own transcendent 
excellence ; its shame, because that excellence was 
contemned often where it ought to have been hon- 



20 A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE. 

ored. Noble man ! he could dare and bear to stand 
grandly aloof from all polemical parties, and as a con- 
sequence was destined to endure hatred, calumny, 
anathema from some in all of them. How deeply, 
how reverently, did he ponder the intricate and pain- 
ful mysteries of our being ! how finely attuned were 
his religious perceptions ! Intensely loved wherever 
there was capacity to appreciate his worth, but de- 
tested all the more for that very superiority in good- 
ness by those who were unable to comprehend, much 
less revere it, he died in his day's prime, a martyr to 
overwrought mental energies, and to bitter, cruel per- 
secution. By his side is the calm, thoughtful Chan- 
ning, to whom Robertson paid so just and generous a 
tribute ; kindred in spirit, diverse as were their ecclesi- 
astical relations — Channing, who sought the moral 
and religious elevation of all human beings, the spread 
of the kingdom of peace and of Christ upon earth, 
and whose last audible words were, '' I have received 
many messages from the Spirit." 

By these I see Eugenie de Guerin, the loving, de- 
voted sister, the tender-spirited and devout Romanist, 
who so sweetly wrote, " This suffices me, O my God ! 
I adore Thy impenetrable designs ; I submit to them 
with all my heart; I would that all who suffer could 
feel the balm of prayer;" and who, faithful still to the 
influences of her early training, speaks of the comfort 
and blessing of " confession." 



A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE. 21 

Here I meet William Wilberforce, a dutiful son and 
lover of the '* Establishment," the friend of Hannah 
More, and her liberal pecuniary helper in her labors 
among the poor of Cheddar ; who strove by his pen 
to arouse the fashionable world from the frivolities of 
life, and by his voice in the British House of Com- 
mons (where at one time he stood almost alone as an 
Abolitionist) to stir the public mind on the subject of 
Slavery, never resting until success crowned his 
parliamentary exertions on behalf of the oppressed 
Africans. 

Not far off I come to John Foster, that deep thinker 
and light of the Baptist Church, whose mighty intel- 
lect could accept no superficial or mere theological 
answer to the great and difficult questions which press 
upon the fervent searcher after truth — questions to 
which for him came no " Eureka " on this side the 
grave, and whose profoundly devout spirit was thus 
almost always steeped in gloom, finding its only re- 
pose in the Divine promises of Scripture, and the com- 
forting confidence that '' what we know not now, we 
shall know hereafter." 

Then, as I look along the row of books, come Mary 
Anne Schimmelpenninck, historian of the Port Royal- 
ists, who, leaving her early Quaker surroundings, 
found Jier haven of rest among the pious Moravians, 
and, after a pilgrimage of usefulness protracted to ad- 
vanced age, departed joyfully exclaiming, *' Do you 



22 A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE. 

not hear the voices ? and the children's are the 
loudest !" Agnes Elizabeth Jones, turning aside from 
the refined indulgences of a happy home, and laying 
down her comparatively youthful life a sacrifice to 
exhausting toil on behalf of the helpless and destitute. 
The stern but brave Lady Huntington, who quitted 
the brilliant circle of court gayeties for the tabernacle 
and prayer-meeting, and showed the titled and noble 
that she regarded religion as something more than a 
name. Mary L. Ware, the active practical worker, 
adorning the doctrine of Christ by her own beautiful 
showing forth of it in every-day life,, as nurse and 
watcher in the lonely abode of the sick, as the faithful 
trainer of her children, as the devoted helper and com- 
forter of her husband both in things temporal and 
spiritual, and as the patient, triumphant Christian suf- 
ferer through the lingering anguish of her own death. 
Alice and Phebe Cary, loving God as the Universal 
and All-loving Father ; the latter of whom we especi- 
ally delight to think of as the writer of that exquisite 
hymn beginning, " One sweetly solemn thought," 
Fredrika Bremer, glowing with imagination and be- 
nevolence, whose heart was in sympathy with every 
sufferer in the world, even of the brute creation, and 
wdiose religious testimony was, " The Crucified has 
reconciled me to the trials of earth, and chased away 
its darkness through the light which He has shed be- 
yond the grave." 



A SHELF IN MY BOOKCASE. 23 

Among my books are various other biographies, but 
tJicse happen to be the occupants of one shelf. How 
glad and grateful I am that I have been permitted to 
become acquainted with such characters through the 
registry of their lives and their writings ! that if, 
through their influence, I strive to grow better and 
holier, I may hope, possibly, to know something more 
of them in that coming life, where all party names 
shall be as if they had never existed, and where 
those only who have truly loved God, and sought to 
love and bless their fellow-creatures while on earth, 
can hope to be admitted. 

And of what moment to them now are all those 
minor disagreements of opinion which here below 
divided them, and kept some of them far apart from 
each other? Of none. Through various and very 
unlike means and ways, they were all " so guided and 
governed by the good Spirit of God " as to be led into 
** righteousness of life ;" and thus we feel that they are 
all now mingling with those who in the happy dwell- 
ings of the blessed shall forever abide together in the 
unity of that Divine Spirit, which is the bond and 
bliss of heaven ! 




THOUGHTS ON GENIUS. 



IT is somewhat remarkable that those who have 
most strenuously contended against the existence of 
Genius should frequently have been found among the 
very individuals whose indisputable title to its posses- 
sion would seem most decisively to verify that exist- 
ence ; and that the ingeniously wrought theories laid 
down to prove that it is not have proceeded from pens 
whose plenitude of power demonstrates that it is. 

There is a popular idea which supposes, in all 
sincerity, that Genius has but to embark for v/hatever 
port it pleases, and steer away " on the smooth surface 
of a summer sea " to any hemisphere of science, art 
or learning it chooses to make for ; that it may, like 
the eagle, soar unfatigued in the sunbeam, or with 
electro-magnetic facility command time and space 
with scarce a consciousness of effort. These fashion- 
ers of a splendid abstraction are mistaken. Their 
beau ideal is not the propria persona. Genius is 
indeed a magician, but a magician that in most cases 
must work hard with its enchantments to accomplish 
its projects. It is not independent of method, of labor, 

(24) 



THOUGHTS ON GENIUS. 25 

of perseverance. It was indeed the informing spirit 
that conceived the mighty project of Hannibal, but 
skill and toil were its executives. 

It is amusing to hear some persons say, " Oh, such 
a one has a genius for mechanics, or languages, or 
poetry ; it costs them no trouble to excel." We may, 
however, be very sure Fulton would not tell us he 
sat in indolent reverie until a steamer, bearing away 
majestically, started up before him ; or Porson, that 
the gift of languages came to him by natural inher- 
itance; or Pope, that his finished and euphonious 
numbers flowed from his pen as prose from the lips 
of the man who had talked it all his life without 
knowing it ; still we cannot suppose that every indus- 
trious machinist could have become a Fulton, or every 
earnest toiler over the Greek alphabet a Porson, or 
every perseveringly plodding framer of rhymes a 
Pope. 

We read that when Sir Isaac Newton was asked by 
what means he made his mighty conquests in the 
worlds of mathematical and natural science, he an- 
swered, by thinking. He did not sit sleepily in the 
Castle of Indolence, but piled stone upon stone and 
effort upon effort. His testimony, coupled with his 
surpassing attainments, furnishes decisive proof that 
Genius is not a sinecure, not a triumph without a toil. 
But shall we be therefore justified in denying to the 
mind of Newton a peculiar and illustrious intellectual 



26 THOUGHTS ON GENIUS. 

heritage ? or rather, ought we not to regard as demon- 
strative of true Genius that very intellectual might 
which thus could and did summon everything with- 
out, within, around, everything in external circum- 
stances and ordinary incidents, to bring tribute into 
its treasury ? Is there not an element of true Genius 
in that life-imparting spirit which converts even obsta- 
cles into aids, and transforms neutral materials into 
active and efficient forces ? 

The great Sir William Jones, when engaged in an 
argument which on his side aimed to disprove the 
existence of Genius, was, in allusion to the brilliancy 
of power with which he sustained his own part of 
the controversy, thus wittily but delicately compli- 
mented his antagonist : 

Whate'er you say, whate'er you write, 
Proves your opponent in tlie right. 

Yet in advocating on too broad a scale the natural 
equality of human talent, Genius is far from intending 
a sophistical use of its ability. It probably is firmly 
persuaded of the tenability of its own theory. It 
finds it can itself compass achievements which appear 
impracticable, and annihilate difficulties that seem 
invincible ; and thence draws the corollary that others 
have only to go and do likewise. Its toils are so 
faithful and ferventthat it concludes its own momen- 
tum of power to be rather " the reward and result, 



THOUGHTS ON GENIUS. 2/ 

than the cause,'' of the untiring and ceaseless activity 
with which these toils are prosecuted. 

Even Genius, slothful, rarely wins a laurel. It often 
does, indeed, like the Hare in the fable, make with 
apparent ease surprising bounds ; but should it think 
to despise labor and application, it may ultimately be 
overtaken even by the Tortoise. If it prefer to slum- 
ber and sleep, it can claim no exemption from " the 
pains and penalties of idleness ; " and patient, plodding, 
but unyielding industry may filch from it its crown. 

All these admissions, however, being made, the 
question arises whether there is not, nevertheless, a 
certain original structure, a kind of primary formation 
in certain minds, which becomes a basis and substra- 
tum for the intellectual edifice ; whether anything less 
than this native individuality could impart an impulse 
equally and as intensely influential, and whether even 
the happiest combination of circumstances and influ- 
ences would not, in the majority of cases, utterly fail 
in educing a similar result. Though it has been 
justly said that '* upon the incidents of the embryo 
acorn depend the evolutions and progress of the oak," 
yet from that embryo acorn only can that oak arise ; 
nor could any one of the other thousand germs of 
the forest produce it, let their growth be surrounded 
with what oak-like incidents soever you may gather 
around them. 

True Genius, as has been observed already, pretends 



28 THOUGHTS ON GENIUS. 

not to act irrespectively of application and assiduity 
as its allies ; it is willing to enlist the humblest auxili- 
aries in its service ; it levies contributions on earth, 
air and sea as its subsidiaries. But nothing less than 
Genius could thus shape and mold all things as its 
agents ; nothing lower than Genius could first dis- 
cern "the figure hid in the marble," though, once 
known it lies there, the skill of the mere mechanical 
artificer may suffice to draw it forth. Labor executes ; 
but Genius generally designs. Napoleon and Julius 
Caesar employed many subordinate generals as the 
effective strength of their military tactics ; yet without 
a Napoleon or a Caesar at their head probably neither 
Austerlitz nor Pharsalia had been won. 

In expressing a belief in the existence of Genius, 
the writer is far from intending to echo a blind adora- 
tion of it ; still less to make this belief a plea for 
intellectual indolence on the part of those who are 
not gifted with its possession. Too little value is 
often ascribed, and too meager a tribute of respect 
awarded, to the sedulous exertion of ordinary powers, 
though they are the nerve and sinew of the world's 
advancement. If there be indeed such a reality as 
Genius, it is the peculiar bestowment of God ; how 
awful, then, the accountability of those who, thus en- 
dowed, misimprove it ! As it confers greater powers 
upon its possessor than are intrusted to the majority 
of human beings, it imposes proportionable responsi- 



THOUGHTS ON GENIUS. 29 

bilitles, the almost onerous weight of which might 
be sufficient to balance, perhaps, " its privileges and 
immunities in the empire of Mind." It is the gift of 
Him who, though He did not grant all ten talents, 
gave to the humblest of His creatures one, and who 
will enable that one to yield, in its faithful improve- 
ment, if not a hundred-fold, yet sixty or thirty, of 
happiness and usefulness. 

And, after all, how much soever thinking minds 
may differ in opinion relative to the general parity or 
imparity of native talent, there will be no controversy 
in their acknowledgments that mind is progressive ; 
that the highest intellectual power is usually the most 
deeply sensible of the necessity of unremitting exercise 
to render it nobly successful ; that mental progress is 
commensurate with mental effort ; that five talents 
will not without assiduous toil become ten, and that 
with it even one may be made two. If these con- 
victions are actively influential on our lives, it will 
perhaps be but of little practical moment (however 
widely antithetical in theory be the two conclusions) 
whether we decide. Genius to be "the producer or 
the product^' the antecedent or the consequent — the 
impetus that wins the race or the crown which rests 
on the brow when the race is won. 



-^^^^i^-^^^i^^ 



OUR BURIED GRIEFS. 



WHEN we are just entering on life, and know per- 
sonally only a very little of its changes and sor- 
rows, we are disposed, and can afford, to talk poetically 
of "the Pleasures of Melancholy." A species of mourn- 
fully romantic musing is rather a soothing and con- 
genial indulgence, as we take our first lessons in the 
minor sadnesses and disappointments of earth. But 
when we have lived longer, and passed through vicis- 
situde upon vicissitude — when we have seen " friend 
after friend depart," and beheld our little nests of hap- 
piness one after another torn down and cast upon the 
ground — all is different then, and ** the Pleasures of 
Melancholy " are sought and eulogized by us no 
longer. 

We love, indeed, times without number, to recall the 
images of those friends who have preceded us to the 
spirit-world ; to think on their virtues, and often, very 
often, to retrace scenes of past happiness enjoyed in 
their society. We take up a favorite book whose rich 
and glowing thoughts we were wont to share with 
some beloved associate ; we gaze on those " fast-fading 

(30) 



OUR BURIED GRIEFS. , 3t 

hues of the west " that we have watched so frequently 
by the side of one who delighted to point out each 
delicately changing tint as it melted into twilight ; or 
on the bright moon gloriously ascending the heavens, 
beneath whose gentle beams we have again and again 
wandered forth in the quiet summer evening, when 
feet trod beside ours that are now moldering in the 
grave. How dearly cherished are these remembrances ! 
For worlds we would not part with them. 

But we do not, as once we did, sit gazing out alone 
into the pale, still moonlight, hour after hour, musing 
over days forever fled. Ah no ! we could not bear it 
now. We have tasted too deeply, and learned too 
much of real sorrow, sedulously any longer to feed 
the mere sentiment. While at precious intervals we 
yield ourselves up to sacred communion with the un- 
seen, we dare not dwell there continually. Grateful 
for the blessed associations which link us with the 
past and the departed, and remembering that after a 
season '' where they are we too shall be," our hearts 
are uplifted from too depressing influences to the 
desire that through our griefs our lives may be en- 
nobled. We think tenderly upon the virtues of our 
beloved, not to sink down in saddening retrospections, 
but to receive from their memory a fresh inspiration 
to holy and benevolent activities. While there is any 
little path for us to tread, however humble, in which 
we can smooth away something of ruggedness from 



32 OUR BURIED GRIEFS. 

that of any weary fellow-traveler, we know that some 
such activities may be ours. We rise up from rev- 
erie, however tender and soothing, and feel that if it 
be given us to drop daily into God's treasury but a 
single mite that may help to render humanity happier 
and better, or to diminish its miseries and sins ; if we 
are permitted to solace a sufferer, or to minister one 
cheering utterance to a drooping spirit out of the con- 
solations wherewith we ourselves have ofttimes been 
comforted by the All-Merciful, the very pains and 
trials of our lot shall become new impulses to Chris- 
tian virtue. 

And thus, from seeds which lie hidden amid the 
ashes of our hearthstones, from our buried griefs, 
may spring up living and heavenly plants, 

Whose flowers look upward to the sky ! 




A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 



I HAVE by me much of my mother's early cor- 
respondence ; many letters addressed to her when 
quite a girl ; letters filled not with commonplace 
trifling, but with thoughts and things worthy of pres- 
ervation. Among these are some written by a lady 
of whose peculiarly interesting history I have often 
heard that beloved mother speak, and which I shall 
relate as given me by her. 

The ancient town of D , one of the Cinque Ports 

of England, celebrated for its old castle, and for those 
towering cliffs with which the name of Shakespeare 
has become identified through a passage in King Lear, 
is in the southeastern part of the island. Here lived 
one whose life in its very opening had, as we perhaps 
should say, been blighted. Engaged, in the bloom of her 
youth, to a man of fine talents and pure morals, with the 
approval of friends and the fresh, full love of a first be- 
trothal, she had within a few weeks of her intended nup- 
tials been suddenly stricken down by a mysterious para- 
lytic affection, from apparently perfect health to be a life- 
long, bed-ridden, suffering invalid. All power in the 
3 (33) 



34 A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 

lower extremities being annihilated, she lay from about 
her twenty-fifth year prostrate on her couch, never 
more to arise fi-om it. Her nervous system was liable 
to sudden and singular spasmodic attacks upon the 
least unusual physical or mental stimulus ; and thus a 
condition of perfect quiet seemed almost essential to 
her very existence. Shattered, however, as was its 
earthly environment, " strong through the ruins rose 
the mind," seemingly purer and more elevated for 
passing through a furnace of peculiar intensity. In 
her isolation from the world she was not called upon 
to endure that deeper isolation which must have fallen 
upon her, had he to whom her troth was pledged held 
himself henceforth free of the tie that bound them to 
each other. The partner of his home she could not 
be ; the partner of his heart, in all its joys and griefs, 
she still remained. He was a physician, his residence 
being in the city of C — — , about twenty miles from 

D ; and in those days facilities of conveyance were 

few and slow ; yet once in two weeks his visits to her 
were undeviatingly made, and their intervals bright- 
ened by frequent and animated correspondence. His 
portrait hung ever at the foot of her bed, veiled by a 
little green curtain, to be drawn aside only in the 
hours most sacred to thoughtfulness and love, and to 
a few chosen friends sometimes unveiled. And when 
some amiable stranger, whose nature seemed suffi- 
ciently in affinity with her own to draw forth her con- 



A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 35 

fidence, entered Miss R 's room, she would gently 

say, " Have you ever seen my C ?" and then the 

little picture was for a few moments unveiled. 

The cultivated, the excellent, came around her ; 
strangers were attracted to her room by the beautiful 
spirituality and the gentle, submissive piety of its in- 
habitant. Gifts were continually brought her of such 
character as her pure and refined taste most delighted 
in. The earliest spring blossoms filled her flower 
vases ; the choicest seaweeds from her native beach 
replenished her little baskets ; delicate materials for 
the various works of art in which she delighted and 
excelled were sent to her ; new volumes of elegant 
literature were ever lying on her table. When not 
engaged with her beloved books, her busy fingers were 
employed either in tracing in letters to her friends 
her own happy thoughts, or in keeping in exquisite 
order her own wardrobe and that of other members of 
her family, or in executing some little decorative 
work of fancy as an offering to a friend. 

At this period my mother, then a girl of eighteen, 

on a visit to D , was introduced to Miss R.'s room, 

and, having herself a mind capable of keenly appreciat- 
ing the beautiful and good, was soon won toward her, 

as was Miss R , in return, toward my mother. 

And on the return of the latter in a few months to 
her own home began that correspondence of which I 
have spoken, in which both my mother and my 
mother's mother bore a part. 



36 A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 

Not long after, a lady who had wealth and benevo- 
lence became earnestly interested in the subject of my 

little story. The ceaseless bustle of D , a garrisoned 

town, constantly the seat of military parades and 
martial music, was distressing to the sensitively 
nervous system of the interesting sufferer, whose 
father, being established in business there, could not 
conveniently leave it for another vicinity. This lady, 

Mrs. B , proposed to build and furnish, a few miles 

out of town, such a residence as should insure com- 
plete seclusion from every external excitement. Phy- 
sicians thought if the fatigue of a removal could be 
sustained by the patient, such a change would prob- 
ably secure to her a mitigation of the more painful 
paroxysms of her disease. The offer was accepted, 
the cottage was built, and fitted up with every refine- 
ment that a delicately cultivated taste could suggest. 

Hither Miss R was carried*, accompanied by one 

favorite sister, younger than herself, who had long 
made her her own especial charge ; and though for a 
season her frail tabernacle was shaken almost to its 
foundation by the physical excitement of being moved, 
yet under the tender care of affection she soon re- 
gained her ordinary condition. The noble friend 
settled on her an income adequate to her support, and 
presented to her the cottage as her own. There she 
passed her remaining years, living in this spot from 
early middle life till seventy-eight years of age. And 



A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 37 

he, whose tenderly unselfish attachment deepened, not 
weakened, in proportion as it became to her her 
sweetest earthly dependence, loved on, and loved for- 
ever. For more than forty years their beautiful inter- 
course was prolonged on earth, till, at the age of three- 
score and ten, he preceded his beloved to the spirit 
land. Some years after his death, thus wrote to me 
an aunt of mine across the broad Atlantic : 

I have entered the fairy cottage ; it is fitted up in exquisite taste, 

expressly for dear A R 's habitation, and is exactly one of 

those sweet romantic cottages which one reads of, but seldom sees. 
Jessamine and roses cover the front, and other sweets abound ; all was 
well adapted to suit her pure and elegant taste, and the interior equally 
so. When she converses, still blest with all her faculties clear and 
strong as ever, her countenance has all the expression of youth, after 
having kept her bed between fifty and sixty years. So it is the soul 
illumines the face ! 

There are those on the other side of the wide ocean 
whose eyes, chanced they to light on this little nar- 
rative, would perhaps moisten as they recognized the 
life-picture thus simply and slightly sketched, and 
which has been given as an introduction to a few ex- 
tracts from the many beautiful letters lying in my 
drawer, that appeared to me worthy of meeting other 
eyes than mine. Her epistles contain frequent and 
discriminating allusions to the literature of the day ; 
but I have preferred selecting passages which more 
particularly shadow forth some of the beautiful traits 
of her own affectionate, refined and devotional nature. 



38 A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 

From a letter to my mother (then Miss W ) : 

It is only when my friends are ill that I feel the misfortune of want- 
ing health. When they are well, my animated delight and gratitude to 
Providence give me the most pure gratification ; and I have sometimes 
thought that to be in health myself and see them so, were happiness too 
perfect for this probationary state. The infinite wisdom and mercy of 
Providence are conspicuous in His gracious support of me, and surely, 
my love, I must be the most senseless and ungrateful of beings were I to 
be a murmurer, when the loss of one blessing is so amply compensated 
by the possession of many others. All the endearing comforts of the 
social and friendly affections are mine in the highest degree. Oh, yes ! 
and though my feeble person is confined to one little space, my active 
mind is free, looks out and tastes happiness unbounded by space, and 
over which neither time nor death can have power. It is not only for 
their present happiness that I view with such exquisite delight the excel- 
lences of my friends ; my mind builds on the blissful hope of renewing 
with them in a future state the most durable, perfect and pure attach- 
ment, where, with enlarged minds and perfected hearts, sorrow and pain 
can never come. 

To the same : 

It is true I have a taste for little elegances, which if not inconsisten t 
with my duty I should oftener indulge, by rendering more perfect these 
little works of fancy, but I never feel concern at this, because, while 
checking such improper wishes, affection and gratitude often give a play 
to my little abilities, and invention is exercised. When I cannot write 
I may be busied, and thus with innocence and pleasure pass hours which, 
but for such resources, had perhaps been tedious and dull. My darling 

sister E and myself are making a collection of marine plants, from 

which we find much amusement. Our beach, shores and rocks produce 
great variety ; some of them are beautifully minute in their fibers, others 
of a charming color. They require much time, care and patience to 
preserve to advantage, but when completed give ample recompense in 
the entertainment they present to a curious observer. I am myself fond 



A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 39 

to enthusiasm of the wonders of nature, and were my abihty equal to 
my wish, and could I indulge such a wish without breach of any impor- 
tant duty, would have a charming collection not only of marine plants, 
but also of the fields and gardens. Beholding the wonders of nature, we 
are led to contemplate the attributes of God, 

To the same : 

The friends I love are preferred for their worth, without reference to 
such accidental advantage or misfortune as distinction of rank. Once 
having adopted them I cannot easily alter my opinion, and do not drop 
the society of a friend without having the misfortune to believe that 
friend very unworthy. 

To the same : 

There are in the world beings of that superficial way of thinking as 
to judge only from appearances. To such the mind, replete with princi- 
ple and glowing with infelt rectitude, is no object for contemplation, but 
if the being possessing it happen to have any little traits of eccentricity, 
they will be seized on as the foundation of jest and unpleasing remark. 
Now, though nothing in the world is- more true than the maxim, that the 
opinions of wise men are the true measures of glory, yet to a mind of 
sensibility much real pain is sometimes conveyed by the little taunts and 
jests of such trivial characters. Therefore I would have all good young 
people accustom themselves to general customs and manners, so far as 
they tend not to undermine the principles of religion and morality, or 
those thousand little points of delicacy which a good and virtuous mother 
is constantly inculcating in her children. 

To the same : 

I think it good early to habituate the mind to the expectation of only 
imperfect happiness in this scene of probation ; it will not then have the 
bitterness of disappointment to encounter when afHictions assail it ; and 
considering all our little trials as the decree of an All- Wise Providence, 
we cannot surely murmur at them ; they are not the harsh punishments 
of a severe judge, but the gentle admonitions of a tender Parent, who 



40 A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 

chastens but in love. Impressed with this idea we can bear much, and 
every good is doubly felt by that mind which looks up with pious grati- 
tude, and humbly receives it as the gift of Infinite Mercy, and not the 
reward of desert. Cheerful acquiescence and lively gratitude are ever 
the inmates of such happy bosoms. 

To the same : 

Nothing, my dear S , can be more delightful to me than what 

you say of my beloved friend, Mrs. . I love the praises of my 

friends ; that is a music most cordial to my heart, and not distressing to 
my nerves. You can now judge of my happiness in calling such beings 
friends, and will be charmed by the elegant simplicity of their unaffected 
manners, and the superior worth of their cultivated minds. She will 
love you, dear, with affection as pure as mine ; but from her you may 
very justly hope to receive more pleasure than I can offer you. She is 
much more happily gifted than I am, and I can equal her only in the 
fervent sincerity of my wishes ; yet you will easily comprehend that I 
feel a glowing pleasure in making this acknowledgment. When I think 
of the excellences of my friends, I can only look up and breathe a sigh 
of grateful thanks to my God for having thus blessed nie in theni. 

From a letter to my grandmother, Mrs. W : 

I cannot tell you, my beloved friend, how much your kind con- 
gratulations on my abated sufferings gratified me. To possess the esteem 
and good wishes of the worthy is the first of human pleasures ; a pleasure 
for which my heart has panted ever since it felt the power of reason and 
the love of virtue. To those who know not the temper of my mind, it 
might seem very strange that I should confess a grateful pleasure in the 
continuance of life, conscious as I am that its prolongation must be 
marked by the increase of personal infirmity, but to the being whose 
mind expands to the social affections, to the pure joys of religion, it will 
not seem surprising. Convinced of the wisdom and mercy of the Creator, 
how is it possible I should feel inclined to murmur at His decrees ? That 
Power which created me what I am, shall He not best judge of the part 



A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 4 1 

I am able to sustain ? Painful though it seem, I feel assured of His pro- 
tecting care and tender mercy, and submit in humble confidence to His 
disposal. It is true, when I think myself on the verge of the grave, I hail 
the hour with a sentiment of joy which proves I am not insensible to the 
misfortunes which have occurred to me in this life, but when, contrary to 
my expectation, I again find myself a sojourner in this scene of care, I 
cannot but hope there will arise future bliss from present trial. I 
strive to live to the use and comfort of those friends whose tenderness 
makes up the dearest and most delightful source of my earthly happi- 
ness, and when I behold the careworn countenance of a dear and vener- 
able mother brighten into joy as she blesses God for my continuance with 
her — when I feel the pressure of my darling sister's lips as she paints to 
me the joy of her innocent heart so tenderly attached to me — and when 
in the altered language dictated by the heart of the most constant and 
virtuous of friends, my C , I trace the gratitude and happiness he ex- 
periences in my returning life — what unutterable emotion fills my mind ! 
how grateful I feel for such blessings, how ardently I long to deserve 
them, no power of language can paint. 

I prolong no further these little extracts, but will 
simply add that a few years since there came to me 
from a relative in England a newspaper, in which the 
death of her who had been the friend of my mother 
and of my mother's mother was thus simply an- 
nounced : 

Died, May lo, at B Cottage, near B , Kent, Miss A 

R , whose exemplary patience and cheerfulness under suffering had 

endeared her to a large circle of friends, aged seventy-eight." 

Thus, after a brief parting, were she and her best- 
loved friend eternally united in a world which itself 
could hardly heighten the elevated purity and con- 



42 



A LEAF FROM THE BOOK OF REAL LIFE. 



stancy of their earthly love. Her nurse and sister, 

her " darling E ," followed her in a year or two. 

Those to whom her letters were addressed have all 
passed away ; and the heart that dictated, and the 
hearts that welcomed them, have now doubtless, to 
use her own words, renewed, in a higher state, the 
most durable, perfect and pure attachment. 




THE PLEASURES AND PAINS CONNECTED 
WITH TEACHING. 



[Written for the Western Literary Institute.] 

IT is related by an eminent lady of this country that 
when visiting, many years since, the celebrated 
Miss Edgeworth, the latter presented to her her 
youngest sister as a pupil of her own training, and 
observed that she felt her pride more gratified in pro- 
ducing to her friends this result of practical intellect- 
ual labor than it had ever been by any reputation she 
had derived from her literary productions. That repu- 
tation all will acknowledge not to be small. How 
highly, then, must this distinguished woman have 
estimated the value of mind influencing mind through 
the medium of education ! how truly have appreci- 
ated the contribution to human happiness made by 
those who are faithfully and worthily engaged in its 
duties ! 

To aspire after the fame of this gifted lady, in the 
world of letters, would be to the majority of women 
a hopeless emulation ; yet, what woman who is placed 

(43) 



44 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

in the power-giving station of mother or teacher but 
may lawfully seek some degree of participation in the 
pleasure she experienced on beholding, in the culti- 
vated mind and character of another, the '' finished 
fabric " of her own fair labors ! 

From a share in tliis noble emulation not one of us 
is excluded. We shall not probably win to ourselves 
a name venerable with the dignity of authorship, or 
leave the monuments of our pen upon the scroll of 
recording time. Yet we may each be, on the immor- 
tal tablet of some young minds, an Apelles painting 
for posterity. We may leave behind us traces of our 
existence as enduring, as influential, as those he leaves, 
who, through the fascinating volume of science or of 
taste, claims, charms, informs innumerable delighted 
listeners. 

In an age now passed away the association of ideas 
early formed between juvenile intellectual effort and 
corporal pains and penalties was inseparable ; and 
then the images of the schoolmaster and the rod rose 
before the mind's eye in as undivided companionship 
as did those of the Lictor and Fasces of ancient 
Rome. Even the childish picture-book of olden time 
acted as a tiny yet potent auxiliary in stereotyping 
this combination upon the youthful memory, as it 
presented the luckless wight arrayed in Folly's cap, 
and skulking from view, for the warning of all who 
should prove his unhappy followers in the dunce's 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 45 

path. Those days of darkness are departed, and it 
is our privilege to live under a more cheering dispen- 
sation. We see the calling of the instructor, though 
by no means even yet adequately appreciated, never- 
theless invested with a dignity which is recognized in 
some degree even by the superficial thinker; we be- 
hold those who sustain it taking their places among 
the acknowledged benefactors of human kind, and add- 
ing the name of a new and dignified profession to those 
society has already instituted among the learned. 

But we must not beguile any into the field in which, 
as laborers, this honorable reputation is to be gained, 
by incorrect or partial representations of its labor. 
The work of training mind, of developing thought, 
of guiding, sometimes almost creating, the mental 
perceptions, of directing the moral sensibilities, is not 
a beautiful recreation, is not a mere elegantly intel- 
lectual entertainment. It is not laying the tint upon 
the petal of a fair flower you have first sketched ac- 
cording to your pleasure, which quietly lies on the 
paper to receive each selected hue, and retain each 
delicate touch of your own creative pencil. It is not 
caUing at will from the bright dwelling places of 
poetry the combinings of your unrestricted choice, 
and making the inflections of the euphonious measure 
obediently bend to your direction. No ; it is an en- 
terprise, and an enterprise of labor. It is a work, and 
emphatically a work of toil. It is a field which you 



46 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

must ceaselessly till, and watch, and water, would you 
ever hope to behold it ''white unto harvest." It 
may, indeed, prove to the untiring, conscientious 
laborer an Eden ; but it will be an Eden as it was left 
by the fall, not possessing an entire immunity from 
thorns and thistles. The laurels of a teacher are not 
as rapidly won, neither can his achievements be as 
laconically narrated, as were those of the conqueror 
of Zela. Jewels may bind his brow akin to those 
which were Cornelia's pride; but more than the elab- 
orate skill of the jeweler upon earth's diamond is 
needful to prepare, and burnish, and call them forth 
to brightness and to beauty. Fancy and feeling, 
properly regulated, throw a thousand charms over 
the employment of teaching; but they must be under 
the guidance of a higher and less fluctuating stimulus 
than their own impulses, or they will often shrink 
disappointed from successive collision with discordant 
materials, enfeebling those labors which they ought 
at once to enliven and invigorate. 

An individual, whose bosom, glowing with the wish 
to do good, kindles with the ardor of benevolent emo- 
tion beneath that picture which the poet drew, when, 
without any practical capacity for judging, he pro- 
nounced it a " delightful task," enters, at a period of 
life when expectations are most sanguine, and every 
project appears most readily executed, upon the 
duties of a school. He hopes at once to create 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 4/ 

around him a little world of intellectual animation and 
effort. He knows, indeed, that there are difficulties 
in the ascent to the hill of science, but expects he 
shall be able to smooth away these so effectually that, 
when he has planted the feet of his pupils upon its 
lowest round, he shall behold their unimpeded steps 
delightedly and successfully ascend its summit. As 
the earth drinks in the fragrant dews of heaven, as 
the lambs hasten to the green pasture, so does he 
look for the eager perceptions of his little flock to 
receive the nourishing food of knowledge. He has 
made no calculation upon dullness, ignorance or insen- 
sibility; no allowances for the counteracting influ- 
ences of previous bad training or want of training ; 
has not, perhaps, even deducted the tret from the 
untold amount of good he purposes to accomplish. 

But when he begins his actual work he finds no 
exemption guaranteed in his favor from the general 
truth, that every unqualified expectation ever involves 
disappointment. He now perceives a thousand little 
impediments and discouragements which previously 
were wholly unanticipated. He had hoped to see 
those *' run and not be weary " in the road of instruc- 
tion who can scarcely even '' lualk and not faint" in 
its ways. He derives, however, an instructive though 
unwelcome lesson from his first experience : he learns 
that he must not expect the little beings, on whose 
hearts and minds he is about to operate, to be par- 



48 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

takers of a nature more ductile to good impressions, 
more easily disciplined into obedience to duty than is 
his own. 

Yet let a youthful teacher begin his work with all 
of ardor, with all even of enthusiasm, that his char- 
acter can supply : though sometimes checked where 
they had been unduly sanguine, they will furnish, if 
sustained by the unfaltering incitements of duty, ever- 
springing motives to persevere with faithful zeal in a 
calling which, amid all its solicitudes, will generally 
return its reward into his bosom, even " a hundred- 
fold." 

The discouragements, however, with which teachers 
have to contend are numerous, and arise from various 
causes. Not among the least of these is the counter in- 
fluence which the master spirit of society, with its inces- 
sant lessons of frivolity and worldliness (lessons, alas ! 
too easily and agreeably learned, because congenial 
to the mind's natural indolence), is continually oppos- 
ing to their own efforts for the moral aind intellectual 
improvement of their pupils. With how little success 
can a teacher lead tJiose to cherish the rich and varied 
gifts of the understanding and the heart as avenues 
to the purest earthly happiness, while elsewhere both 
precept and example unceasingly concur to place 
before them wealth, fashion and their accompani- 
ments as the sum total of all that is needful for re- 
spectability in the eyes of others, or for their own 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 49 

personal enjoyment; while they behold competition 
for the tinsel and glitter of external appearance carried 
on with an earnestness, nay eagerness, which they 
have never seen called forth by any mental aspiring ; 
and while a failure of being at par in these things 
with those around them would, they are given to 
understand, consign them, in the world's eye, to a 
station of insignificance, and expose them to a series 
of petty neglects, from which the heaviest intellectual 
or, perhaps, even moral obliquity might charitably be 
sheltered, if balanced by the possession of these out- 
ward distinctions ! 

It is in the power of parents to do much toward 
laying the foundation for the successful labors of a 
teacher, by creating at the earliest possible period in 
the minds of their children a circle of agreeable and 
inviting associations connected with mental cultiva- 
tion. But how shall they do this who themselves 
never learned its value ? and whose provision for 
happiness in this life scarce ever extended beyond 
the tangible realities of money, and food and cloth- 
ing for the body? Happy they who have had parents 
otherwise minded ! There are those who instinctively 
blend with their most engaging memories of infancy 
the idea of a book ; in whose bosoms nature in her 
diversified aspects — the ramble in the field, the blos- 
soms of spring — were associations linked with their 
first little steps up the ladder of learning, and were by 
4 



50 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

a parent's judicious disposal of their pleasures and 
studies made kindred memories, bright with kindred 
joys. In their happy retrospections the walk " abroad 
in the meadows to see the young Iambs " is remem- 
bered simultaneously with the hymn that described 
it ; the page that taught the simple lesson of " the 
busy bee " is associated with infantile interest in the 
living object ; and the words of " Little bird with 
bosom red " are scarce more indelibly imprinted on 
the leaf that taught the baby rhyme than is upon the 
mind the joy-giving image of the little songster soar- 
ing high in air, fluttering to its uninvaded nest, or 
alighting to partake of the crumbs which the infant 
hand was encouraged to scatter for it along the gar- 
den walk. Yes, some of us can look back, indeed, to 
such a childhood of " golden days ! " 

If " cares are comforts," it is certainly a truth that 
the teacher has of comforts an overflowing store. 
There is the care of imparting knowledge ; the care 
of preserving right discipline ; the care of implanting 
right principles and good habits ; the care of keeping 
up interest and variety in the school ; and, above all, 
the care of habitually regulating his own mind, feel- 
ings and character in his daily intercourse with those 
to whom he is as '* a city set on a hill, which cannot be 
hid." I believe there are no tests of temper superior 
to those of the school-room. The multiplicity of dis- 
positions, added to the many and often adverse home 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 5 I 

influences which we are called to deal with, present 
materials for untiring labor, and demand the hourly 
exercise of patience, ingenuity and perseverance, to 
an extent of which no one not initiated into such 
actual acquaintance with the subject as experience 
alone can bestow is qualified to form an adequate 
idea. 

One unaccustomed to teaching, and thence unfamil- 
iar with its practical minutiae, goes some morning as a 
visitor into a well-regulated school. Pleased with the 
general order and application, the precision of routine 
and the 'harmony of effect, he goes away and says : 
'* Well, if I had only the talent of teaching, I should 
like to take a school." How imperfectly are such 
cursory glances into the scene of a teacher's labors 
competent to estimate them ! They witness, indeed, 
the result, but they little know, for they see not the 
stroke upon stroke, the precept upon precept, the 
" here a little and there a little" that is repeated ; the 
innumerable and oft-retaken steps by which alone that 
result can be disclosed. 

For it does not always seem to a teacher as if the 
laws of matter met an unvarying correspondence in 
the laws of mind, and that, as he adds effort to effort, 
the hearts and understandings on which his mental 
forces are to operate move forward with a constantly 
accelerating momentum in the career of improvement; 
on the contrary, it often appears as if the loop-holes 



52 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

through which every good thing communicated to 
the mind slides away and disappears are so numerous 
that he is ready to conclude the fabled Danaides had 
scarcely a more discouraging task. Yet it is antici- 
pated that beneath his plastic hand the dull will 
become bright, the inert industrious, the perverse and 
petulant amiable ; and to the alchemic pov/er of his 
instructions, often, too, unseconded by any co-work- 
ing influence on the parent's part, it is committed to 
produce effects Avhich sometimes would amount to a 
complete moral and intellectual transformation in the 
character of his pupil. Add to this that often, when 
after a long season of unrequited toil a teacher is just 
beginning to garner up his reward in the dawning 
improvement of that pupil, caprice or fashion tears 
him from his care, and where he has labored " others 
enter into that labor." 

Teachers must likewise often be content faithfully 
to spend their strength for those who neither co-op- 
erate with nor estimate their efforts to benefit them, 
and must occasionally witness their most intense 
exertions for others' good thrown back upon their 
own hearts unappreciated and unimproved. Have 
they never gone to a recitation and brought before 
their class some fortunate illustration, some appropri- 
ate narrative or incident, which they have thought 
would be welcomed with a corresponding feeling by 
those for whom it was designed, and then beheld the 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 53 

vacant look and the deportment that spoke of inatten- 
tion, if not of weariness, where they knew there was 
capacity for the smile of intellect, and where they had 
anticipated its manifestation in the awakening of pleas- 
ure or inquiry ? It is not always thus ; were it so 
the head would ache and the heart faint beneath toil 
so misapplied. But they can recollect, too, a con- 
trasted emotion, as they have looked around upon their 
class, and, beside such an unthankful one, their eye 
has rested upon some countenance, in whose illumined 
features they were certain of beholding the indications 
of pleased and animated interest, and for whose sake 
they felt that the preparation they had essayed to 
make before meeting their class was amply repaid 
them. 

Nevertheless, teachers must not be impatient with, 
the infirmities of their pupils. They must be ready 
much to bear, and much to forbear. They must be 
willing patiently to sow seed after seed in the furrow, 
though sometimes little fruitfulness should spring up. 
** Behold, the husbandman waiteth for the precious 
fruit of the earth, and hath long patience for it. Be 
ye also patient." Till they can be sure there are in 
their own bosoms no obliquities, either willful or invol- 
untary, to darken their path to excellence, let them 
not be so weak as to expect an exemption from them 
in the minds of their youthful charge. 

I could not in this short essay even touch upon 



54 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

topics SO uncounted as all the pleasures and pains of 
a teacher's life ; in proportion to the depth, the fer- 
vency of his interest in his work, will be the frequency 
as well as vividness with which each is alternately 
awakened. Yet such a one would not barter even his 
most painful solicitudes or arduous toils for the undis- 
turbed composure of that individual who goes forth 
to the employment of acting upon minds as a hireling 
to his day, indifferent how he gets through a round 
of mechanical drudgery in which the understanding 
and the heart are alike passive. 

Have I dwelt upon the shades, and omitted to put 
in the lights of the picture ? Far be it from me to do 
so. There are delights, pure and ennobling, in the 
history of a faithful teacher's course. He knows them 
not who, with stern brow and unvarying dullness, 
goes listlessly over the book, however well arranged, 
by the recorded question and answer, neither pausing 
to elucidate nor to inquire how far his pupils have 
elucidated for themselves its instructions ; and who 
permits them to pass through the manifold resources 
of history and natural science, subjects which might 
call forth at one time the varying emotions of taste, 
of sublimity and beauty, and at another the higher 
development of the moral and religious sensibilities, 
with the same imperturbable coldness with which he 
might lead their steps along the page of Play fair over 
the way-worn path of the sophomore's bridge. She 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 55 

knows them not, whose sole, poor ambition is to ren- 
der her charge accompHshed and elegant young 
ladies, prepared to fill their niche among the automata 
of society, and to crush every effort of an inquiring 
understanding, to stifle every whisper of a doubting 
conscience, by the facility- with which the empty mind 
supplies the tongue with as empty prattle; to languish 
out their vapid lives in the " Castle of Indolence," 
thence looking languidly yet superciliously upon the 
employments and enjoyments of the useful and the 
happy, gracefully frittering away that existence which 
Heaven intended should make them ready for eternity. 
These high satisfactions are the meed only of the 
honorably qualified, the active, the persevering, the 
conscientious instructor. For sucli '' each passing 
hour sheds tribute," as, with anxiety, yet hope, they 
daily survey the circle of minds and hearts which He 
who placed them there has given them in deposit. 
Continually are little springs of pleasure rising up to. 
cheer and invigorate their noble toil — springs which 
lie too deep for those to penetrate who only see the 
surface. The silent unfolding and gradual maturing 
of various minds from day to day is watched ; each 
little evidence of progress is noted ; each new devel- 
opment of an expanding intellect is hailed and wel- 
comed; each grateful word of affectionate acknowl- 
edgment is treasured up; and, though there will be 
trials in their path, yet these are balanced by such 



56 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

deep-seated and, sometimes, overflowing sources of 
enjoyment, that the former often appear scarcely worth 
naming in the comparison. 

But our pupils, at length, must leave us ; and when 
they have done so, and have gone forth into the world 
as actors on its busy stage, do the pleasures or pains 
connected with a retrospect of our labors for them 
cease? Far from it. Those pleasing or painful emo- 
tions, of which they may prove the source to us, 
become in some sort coeval with our joint existence. 
It may be ours to behold those to whom we have 
given our toils, our solicitudes, our prayers, failing to 
bring into the active duties of life that standard of 
character which the bent and aim of years on our part 
had been to form ; gladly shaking off all mental dis- 
cipline for an immersion into worldly folly, while 
every surrounding influence combines to accelerate 
the retrogradation. We may witness (I speak now 
with especial reference to the female character) inces- 
sant care most sedulously bestowed on that outward 
adorning which is of the person, while, perhaps, none 
is extended toward planting a single flower of culti- 
vation in the mind, or a seed of wisdom in the heart ; 
and the few half-opened blossoms which could not 
help springing up beneath the fostering hand of edu- 
cation carelessly left to " waste their sweetness," and 
finally to perish by neglect. 

Every faithful teacher has, however, been permitted 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 57 

to realize, in some instances at least, a bright converse 
to this depressing picture. There are those who have 
tasted the heart-ennobHng satisfaction of training up 
minds to understand and enjoy those higher pursuits 
which, once reHshed and valued, have linked in the 
memory of their happy possessor the remembrance of 
the teacher of their youth with some of the sweetest 
felicities of their existence. They have early led to 
the glorious fountain of intellectual delights those 
footsteps which afterward have walked in delightful 
companionship with their own beside its refreshing 
waters. Theirs has been the blessedness — I may 
justly call it so — ''to draw the rich materials from the 
mine," in souls whose treasures, but for them, had, 
perhaps, ever remained buried in the unwrought 
ore of unoccupied and unappropriated endowments. 
They have been the honored instruments of unfold- 
ing to grateful bosoms those countless combinations 
of refined enjoyment which flow from an improved 
understanding and a cultivated heart, which have 
formed a bond of union between them and their 
pupils, whose links in purity and permanency have 
been as links of gold. 

Can there exist upon earth a more reciprocally 
gratifying intercourse than between those who have 
been thus connected when the conventional relation 
of teacher and pupil merges into the companion- 
ship of assimilating minds ? To pass the eye over 



58 PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 

such a one, and in the rising excellences of moral and 
intellectual character to behold many a flower, of 
which we planted the seed, and many a blossom, 
whose infant bud we well remember as it made its 
way in pleasing promise through the soil of our 
watchful cultivation, to hope, yea, to believe, that the 
traces left by our hand in the " line after line " of 
faithful and affectionate instruction may blend insen- 
sibly with the duties, the enjoyments, of some amiable 
and beloved being through a long series of useful 
and happy years ? Is not this worth striving for ? 
Can we put forth energies too untiring to gain such a 
reward, to receive such a recompense ? 

Let us, then, gird up our minds and gather up our 
strength as we go into our school-room. Let us 
ennoble the routine of even the most humble lessons 
by the motive and spirit with which we engage in 
them. Let us look further than to the end of the day, 
or the week, or the term, in examining the bearing 
our labors are calculated to have upon the characters 
of those brought under their influence. Looking 
upon our pupils as beings in the ** infancy of an eter- 
nal existence," let us be careful that we draw on their 
minds no traces which hereafter we shall vainly wish 
could be wiped out. 

Above all, let us go with the burden of our respon- 
sibilities to Him in whose hand are supplies of all 
wisdom, and from whom wisdom is surely never more 



PLEASURES AND PAINS OF TEACHING. 59 

needed than in forming the minds and guiding the 
hearts of creatures He Himself has created for immor- 
tality. We, like a Paul and an Apollos, may plant 
and water; but as in the natural so in the moral world, 
He alone "giveth the increase," and on Him we may 
rely that, if we prosecute our arduous duties in an 
humble dependence on His blessing, He will not 
withhold the early and the latter rain, or contravene 
in this instance His own gracious promise, that " what- 
soever a man soweth, that shall he also reap," and 
that in due season "if we faint not." 




JUSTICE AND HUMANITY TO THE BRUTE 
CREATION. 



Open thy mouth for the dumb.— Holy Writ. 

Consider whether you fulfill your duties to brute creatures, and whether one oi 
these can upbraid you in any way. — R. W. Emerson. 

THERE is one virtue, and, as its opposite, one vice, 
which is rarely touched on by the pen of the 
moraHst, except in casual or fragmentary allusions ; and 
one sin, which, though meeting our eyes everywhere, is 
usually allowed to go unrebuked by any severe repre- 
hension. That duty is the duty of justice and 
humanity toward God's dumb creatures ; that sin is 
the indifference to their comfort and happiness which 
disgraces the Christian community. 

Whence comes it that the Divine rule most truly 
called Golden, as given by our Saviour, never seems 
to be regarded as capable of application to that large 
class of sentient beings denominated brutes ? Whence 
the strange fact that many who are just, kind, con- 
siderate toward their Jntmari brethren, appear wholly 
unaware that any justice and sympathy are due to 
these? ** The Rights of Animals ! " Alas ! the term 

(60) 



JUSTICE AND HUMANITY. 6 1 

would probably call up a smile on the face of many a 
professed expounder of God's ways and Word. Yet, 
are we to suppose that they have no rights, and con- 
sequently can be the subject of no wrongs ? that 
eternal equity will hold us guiltless if we act with re- 
gard to them just as caprice may dictate, careless as 
to their sufferings or their enjoyments ? Nevertheless, 
multitudes seem to look at the whole matter as did 
the Italian coachman, who when expostulated with 
by Miss Frances Power Cobbe for beating his horse 
unmercifully, answered, " What would you have, Sig- 
norina ? he is not a Christian ! " 

Who has not, in listening to a narrative of ill-usage 
received by some one, occasionally heard the expres- 
sion, " He treated such a one like a dog? " and have 
you ever thought what it implied ? what but that such 
is the kind of treatment it is deemed perfectly proper 
a dog should receive. And why is it so ? Why, my 
friend, should you feel a whit more inclined to treat a 
dog harshly, or to be unjust or unkind to any animal, 
than to a man, woman or child ? Is it because, as 
Corporal Trim says of the poor negroes, " they have 
no one to stand up for them?" or because they are 
created on an humbler plane of being than ourselves? 
Either plea is detestable, yet no other can possibly be 
offered for making them the victims of oppression or ill- 
treatment. Perhaps Dr. Johnson was correct when he 
said, '* Is not the pleasure of feeling and exercising 



62 JUSTICE AND HUMANITY. 

power over other beings a principal part of the gratifi- 
cation some people seem to find in cruelty ? " 

I am continually shocked at the insensibility of 
Christian fathers and mothers to the right education 
of their children in this particular. Hundreds of 
people most assiduous in what they term the religious 
training of their offspring never have given apparently 
one moment's thought to this important part of moral 
teaching. The idea that we have duties to inculcate 
on our children and pupils in reference to the beasts, 
birds and insects around us, never seems by any 
chance to have strayed into the heart or brain of the 
majority either of parents or teachers. The young 
memory is filled to repletion with hymns and cate- 
chisms, in not one of which is a whisper of any claim 
this portion of God's heritage has upon us. And 
children, whose little bosoms one might suppose intu- 
itively alive to every tender and compassionate impulse, 
soon become familiar with the influences around them, 
and, among boys especially, too often mournfully illus- 
trate the sad truth of Cowper's words, that of all ills 
which deface the springtime of our youth. 

None sooner shoots, if unrestrained, into luxuriant growth, 
Than cruelty, most devihsh of them all. 

I have seen school books in which are introduced, 
without a word of censure, stories that detail acts of 
wantonness inflicted on dumb animals. No story of 



JUSTICE AND HUMANITY. 63 

this kind should ever be inserted in any book prepared 
for the young, except for the express purpose of mark- 
ing such acts with stern and severe reprobation. No 
parent or preceptor should regard his duties to his 
charge as faithfully fulfilled who has not constantly 
and earnestly instructed them on their moral and re- 
ligious responsibilities toward those whose place in 
the great scale of being renders them utterly depend- 
ent on our justice and our mercy. With sadness I 
add that I have listened to hundreds of sermons from 
almost all classes of preachers, and never yet heard 
one which touched upon our duties to animals. 

A mother to amuse her child gives it for a play- 
thing a little tender kitten. For a short time, perhaps, 
the frolic goes on amicably, and pleases both kitten 
and child ; but after a while the latter ignorantly, 
sometimes wantonly, worries the helpless creature, 
pulling its tail, or lifting it up by neck or ears. Too 
weak to escape, the persecuted little thing at last uses 
its sole micans of defense ; little master or miss feels 
the sharpness of pussy's claws and cries. The Chris- 
tian mother, as she considers herself, says, "' Naughty 
kitty ! baby beat kitty for scratching ! " forthwith 
suiting the action to the word. 

I was once compelled to live in a house with a boy 
of fourteen, who used to divert himself with decapi- 
tating flies as they alighted on the doorsteps, telling 
with high glee how they jumped about after their 



64 JUSTICE AND HUMANITY. 

heads were off; at another time he was glorying in 
the number of bats he had knocked down and maimed ; 
and in either case the gentlest remonstrance from me 
produced only a coarse, loud laugh. This boy was 
the son of a mother who appeared in many things an 
earnest Christian woman ; yet so wholly unawakened 
was her conscience on this point that, though she 
could not but often witness these outgrowths of a 
barbarous disposition, they passed unreproved by her ! 

In one of my walks I said to a little boy who was 
looking at a large flock of blackbirds wending their 
flight through the air, '* Do you not like to see all 
these birds enjoying themselves?" "Why," he 
answered vacantly, " I always thought that birds was 
made to kill!'' Had he been a few years older, and a 
little better educated, I might possibly have suggested 
to him the perusal of a certain well-known and beauti- 
ful poem, entitled " The Birds of Hillingworth." 

The apathy so widely prevalent throughout the 
Christian world on this whole subject has always been 
amazing to me. It is an astounding and unaccount- 
able fact that many persons who, being constitutionally 
kind, feel no disposition to maltreat any dumb creature 
themselves, evince neither pain nor indignation when a 
contrary conduct is forced on their observation by 
others. Absolute indifference as to aught they might 
or could do to diffuse right sentiments or awaken 
humane feelings around them, strange to say, pervades 



JUSTICE AND HUMANITY. 65 

the minds of many who toward their fellow-creatures 
manifest a large measure of benevolence, and toward 
their God a strong sense of accountability. 

Oh ! we cannot but trust a better day is dawning. 
One's heart leaps for joy to know that vigorous, un- 
tiring effort is now being systematically put forth to 
arouse the mind and conscience of the public, through 
societies organized in every direction for the preven- 
tion of cruelty to animals. , This title covers wide 
ground, and includes not only indefatigable work in 
preventing positive abuse of dumb creatures, but like- 
wise in promoting, so far as our ability extends, their 
comforts and their enjoyments. And to so eminently 
righteous an enterprise let each one whose heart is 
rightly concerned in the cause of humanity joyfully 
give his or her mite of influence, time, money, in the 
name of Him who has said, '' Blessed are the merci- 
ful, for they shall obtain mercy." 




MY FATHER'S OLD AGE. 



NO one who ever saw my father in his old age 
would have been likely on leaving him to say 
with Ossian, "Age is dark and unlovely ; " for all who 
knew him testified that Jiis was a picture of cheerful- 
ness, patience, activity, and never-ceasing gratitude to 
God. " The serenity of his spirit," said a good minister, 
" is a pleasant remembrance." 

Life to him had been no " summer sea." A father- 
less child from the age of seven, he was early initiated 
into its toils and trials ; and in subsequent years many 
and various were the sorrows allotted him. Yet noth- 
ing ever appeared to shake his abiding faith in the 
loving-kindness of his Heavenly Father; and even 
after that heaviest blow which removed from him 
when he was past threescore and ten her who had 
been his beloved and congenial companion in joy and 
grief for thirty-eight years, no murmuring word ever 
fell from his lips. When the first shock of bereave- 
ment had passed, the prevailing utterance of his heart 
might be found in the beautiful lines of Southey— ^ 

Not to the grave, not to the grave, my soul, 

Descend to contemplate 
The form thou lov'st ; the spirit is not there ! 
(66) 



MY father's old AGE. 6/ 

He still loved fondly to train the flowers they had 
been accustomed to cultivate and watch together; 
the books she had especially valued were precious in 
his eyes ; the traces of her hand or pen were sacred 
things. " I think of her continually," he would say, 
" and I sometimes wonder how she is now employed, 
whether it may not be possible that she watches over 
us and is conscious of our doings." How he loved 
to talk of the life to come ! no other topic interested 
him half so much ; but it ever blended in his mind with 
the disposition to enjoy all that was nobly and right- 
fully enjoyable in this. He could see no piety in 
depreciating the blessings of earth for the purpose 
of magnifying the felicities of heaven ; nor discover 
aught well pleasing to God in slighting the gifts of 
the present life for the anticipations of the future, 
believing that both are equally His bestowments and 
the fruit of His goodness toward us. Hence, ardently 
as he admired and prized the pious strains of Dr. 
Watts, it pained him to read this line in one of that 
good man's hymns : 

Lord, what a wretched land is this ! 

its tone of complaint seeming to him not in harmony 
with the cheerful thankful spirit that he believed should 
be cherished by a disciple of Christ. And as from 
all his own pursuits and pleasures the frivolous and 
worldly element had ever been excluded, in his mind 



6S MY father's old age. 

there was nothing painfully antithetical between 
thoughts of earth and thoughts of heaven. 

One of the most striking traits in his character was 
his exceeding love of nature in all her forms and 
aspects. At seventy-eight he delighted to walk with 
me to some spot whence we could see, unobstructed 
by any hinderance, the setting sun and evening sky; 
and as we gazed upon them no little changing cloud 
or delicate line of color was unmarked by him. He 
has told me he sometimes tried to draw the attention 
of people to the beauty of sunset ; but they would 
only smile and say, " Oh yes, but don't we see the 
sun set every day of our lives? " 

At the same age he loved on clear starry nights, 
often under a keenly cold wintry atmosphere, to spend 
some time out of doors, observing the different con- 
stellations in the heavens, occasionally even sacrificing 
a little sleep to his favorite pursuit. All his intel- 
lectual pleasures were heightened and elevated by 
that intensely devotional temperament, which through 
every created object raised his aspirations to the 
Creator. While all things presented to his grateful 
spirit " something to please and something to instruct," 
" lifting," in the words of Cowper, " to heaven an 
unpresumptuous eye, he smiling said, my Father 
made them all." 

He loved little children, and little children in 
return loved him. He rejoiced to make them happy; 



MY father's old AGE. 69 

to call out their intellectual and moral perceptions ; 
to draw forth their religious sensibilities; to teach 
them reverence to God, and benevolence toward 
everything that lives and breathes. Few have passed 
through life retaining in so remarkable a degree inno- 
cent and unsuspecting simplicity of character, which, 
alas ! not unfrequently placed his worldly interests in 
the power of the sordid and designing ; for his was 
the eoodness that '* thinks no ill where no ill seems." 

His books, his walks, and his pen were his great 
resources for enjoyment ; but the hours that he valued 
above all others were those spent alone in secret 
communion with his own heart and with his God. 
" I may say to you, my dear child " (such were his 
words), ** prayer is the life of my soul." It was from 
these hours of holy intercourse with heaven he had 
been wont throughout his earthly pilgrimage to gather 
strength day by day for its various trials ; and it was 
from these hours he was enabled in the evening of 
his life, on reviewing all its vicissitudes, to say, "I will 
bless the Lord at all times : His praise shall be contin- 
ually in my mouth." 

In thinking of my beloved parent and of his bright 
and happy old age, one day after leaving him I wrote 
a little sonnet, which I am grateful to remember he 
read with pleasure, and with which I close this sketch : 



70 MY FATHERS OLD AGE. 

At evening-time there shall be light. — Zech. xiv. 7. 

I know an aged man : his hair is white : 

Yet in the very winter-depth of age 
His is no winter : for his soul is bright 

With cheerful things and pure : it is the page 
Where holy feelings, kind affections, write 

Love unto God and love to human kind. 
Keeping from chilling frost his heart and mind. 

Of many pains and sorrows could he tell ; 
Yet grateful saith he, "i% doth all things well." 

He smiles upon a child; he loves a flower: 
With book or pen delighteth oft to dwell 

Alone ; to him is fair the morning hour, 
Pleasant the sun, the stars, the noon, the night ; 

It is his "evening-time," and it is "light ! " 




THE FAULTS OF OTHERS, AND OUR OWN. 



IS it wrong, unchristian, at variance with the Divine 
Law of Love, sometimes to speak in a right spirit 
of the faults of others ? It is occasionally so asserted, 
and, as 'it appears to me, erroneously. Surely our 
moral perceptions are bestowed on us that we may 
discriminate between good and evil, between right 
and wrong, and we are required by Him who gave 
them to exercise those perceptions justly and con- 
scientiously. The character and actions of those by 
whom we are surrounded cannot be unobserved by 
us ; as these continually pass before our mental vision, 
it is a positive duty to form, so far as we may be able, 
correct estimates concerning them. Is it enjoined upon 
us by Christian benevolence to express our approval 
of the good while we are systematically silent as to 
the evil around us ? I think not. 

It is through the lives and acts of individuals that 
abstract moral qualities appear, and that we can alone 
observe the practical development of these qualities. 
It seems clearly demanded of us by Christianity, when 
actions involving right and wrong principle are spoken 

(71) 



72 THE FAULTS OF OTHERS, AND OUR OWN. 

of, to manifest not in the spirit of a censor, but simply 
in that of faithfulness to truth and righteousness, our 
own convictions respecting them. Few things would 
be more unjust than to say that those who do this 
thereby arrogate to themselves superior goodness, or 
erect themselves into a standard either of perfection 
in practice or infallibility in judgment. Some of the 
most modest and humble-minded individuals I have 
known have been those who did not hesitate on suit- 
able occasions to bear their testimony against even the 
minor immoralities of life, although many of the faults 
and follies of society are so popular that no one who 
cares to gain credit with the world will venture even 
the tenderest comment upon them. 

How can, how sJiould one whose heart throbs 
warmly with the love of justice, nobleness, benevo- 
lence, steadfastly and on mistaken principle resolve to 
hold his peace, when plain violations of these are forced 
upon him, as in the ordinary current of life will most 
surely often be the case? That very benevolence, 
which is claimed by some as dictating utter silence, 
would itself be aggrieved thereby. The spirit in which 
a right-minded person will advert to these is so far 
from being incompatible with the holy precepts of 
our Divine Instructor, that it comports much more 
truly with them than to smile on, in apparently un- 
moved placidity, equally upon right and wrong. 

It was said of that glorious man and minister, the 



THE FAULTS OF OTHERS, AND OUR OWN. 73 

late Frederick W. Robertson, that " with those who 
were weak, crushed with remorse, fallen, his com- 
passion, tenderness and long-suffering were as beauti- 
ful as they were unfailing, but falsehood, hypocrisy, or 
the sins of the strong against the weak stirred him to 
the very depths of his being." And it is doubtful 
whether we are capable of intense love for the things 
that are excellent, if there is not within us a corre- 
sponding capacity of as lively a recoil from such as are 
palpably the reverse. 

Those who can speak with almost equal compla- 
cency of <^// people must lack either discrimination or 
truthfulness, must either be negative characters them- 
selves, or to some extent dissemblers. We should try 
to see all the good that really exists in every one with 
whom we come in contact, but to imagine and praise 
such qualities where it is obvious they do not really 
exist is no proof of true charity. On the contrary, to 
praise undistinguishingly is often only a cheap and 
easy way of obtaining popularity. 

Let me not for a moment unintentionally misrepre- 
sent myself There is not under heaven a lovelier 
grace than that which is described as being " kind, not 
puffed up," and which ** thinketh no evil," without a 
portion of which the love of Christ must be a stranger 
to our hearts. There is not a more winning compan- 
ionship than that of one with whom we always feel 
safe from ungenerous criticism, or unkind miscon- 
struction. A mind that should be ever on the alert 



74 THE FAULTS OF OTHERS, AND OUR OWN. 

for little foibles and frailties in those around it, that 
more especially would 

Spy out wee faults, and seek great worth to hide, 

has a thoroughly detestable calling. In what has been 
said I simply mean that as every truth has its neces- 
sary limitations, so should this maxim of never speak- 
ing in disapproval of others have likewise its just 
limit in order to become a truly Christian one. 

Nevertheless, we cannot too closely guard the tem- 
per and manner in which we allude to the faults of our 
fellow-creatures, lest personal distaste or a mere fond- 
ness for talking take to itself the " counterfeit present- 
ment " of a pure love of virtue, and we should endeavor 
to avoid all such criticism on others as we would dep- 
recate as uncharitable were it applied to ourselves. 
The best of all testimony we can give against wrong 
is by seeking to cultivate the right, and by sedulously 
striving to avoid in ourselves whatever pains or shocks 
us in our neighbor, " considering," as saith the excel- 
lent old monk, Thomas a Kempis, " how such a 
practice looks in another, and remembering it would 
be as bad or worse in thyself, remembering also that 
thou hast many faults and imperfections of thy own 
that require a reciprocation of forbearance." 

And thus from our observation of those human in- 
firmities whereof we each and every one are partakers, 
we shall draw no aliment for self-gratulation, but rather 
material for improvement in all that is pleasing to 
God and useful to man. 



THE INTELLFXTUAL AND RELIGIOUS 
ENJOYMENT OF NATURE. 



To him who in the love of Nature holds 
Communion with her visible forms, she speaks 
A various language. — W. C. Bryant. 

THE mere circumstance of having our life's lot 
cast among the beautiful forms of God's natu- 
ral works is not necessarily accompanied with that 
discriminating sense of the resources they contain for 
increasing intellectual happiness, which alone makes 
us true proprietors of their value. It is the mind 
only that can enable us to draw from the vast treasury 
of the natural world the rich materials it is ever dis- 
closing for our enjoyment It is the mind that creates 
those combinations of thought and feeling, those 
exhaustless sources of pleasing and elevating emo- 
tions which the uncounted varieties of God's works 
present to their fervent admirer. And how rarely are 
these sedulously cultivated ! How seldom adequately 
valued! The eye of the common observer passes 
over the changing cloud, the waving forest, the sum- 
mer lightning, the spring blossom, the winter tempest, 

(75) 



76 ENJOYMENT OF NATURE. 

the flowery meadow, all, all with one unmoved — I 
had almost said — " brute, unconscious gaze." There 
are those who appear to possess more than a low 
degree of general mental training who read and even 
think on many subjects, and descant upon science and 
on art, and pen sensible productions, who appear 
as torpidly indifferent to the " harmonious volume " 
God has opened before them in Nature as the mere 
man of business in his counting-room. They are 
entirely unacquainted with the mine of mental wealth 
hidden in the study of " these as they change," and 
are utter strangers to that train of ennobling pleasures 
linked in the mind of a deeper observer with the 
manifestations of Almighty Power and Goodness in 
his natural creation. The soothing or elevating influ- 
ences of contemplation upon these they never or but 
transiently felt. Never, probably, have they gone 
forth from the cares of life or the dejection of sorrow, 
and " heard the voice of God among the trees," or in 
the stillness of the valley, speaking to their bosoms, 
above the turmoil of earth, the tones of peace ; nor 
ever associated with the radiant glory of an even- 
ing sky one image of the blessedness and bright- 
ness of tliat world whose sky is unclouded forever. 
They have casually cast their eye on the moon as she 
wandered in her perfect orb through the zenith, or 
rested her pale crescent on the horizon ; and if one 
idea has thereby been elicited, it has been simply that 



ENJOYMENT OF NATURE. J J 

it was fttll or that it was new. They have seen, sea- 
son after season, the early flowers spring up in the 
fresh luxuriance of the budding year, and truly of 
them it might be said, as Wordsworth of his own 
Peter Bell : 

A primrose by the water's brim 

A yellow primrose was to hitii. 

And it was nothing more. 

The true, holy love and enjoyment of Nature are 
not to be confounded with the rhapsodies of the idle 
sentimentalist. Happily, too, the associations which, 
in the literature of a preceding age, almost inseparably 
linked natural objects with mythological fictions are 
rapidly fading from that of the present. Poets do not 
now people every wood-walk with the Dryads, or 
every stream with Naiades, or invoke the Muses in 
every ramble, or soliloquize about Castalian dews in 
every fountain. Which, indeed, of our modern bards 
would begin a poem with "Descend, ye Nine!" or 
"Apollo, aid my lyre " ? 

But it is not the mythological fable or the mere 
romantic soliloquy that can supply to the deeply- 
thinking and deeply-feeling mind the hidden springs 
of blessed associations presented to it by an intellect- 
ual and religious contemplation of Nature. To enjoy 
these it must have cultivated its higher perceptions, 
both intellectual and moral. It must be capable of 
looking from the material to the immaterial. Then 



yS ENJOYMENT OF NATURE. 

will those delicious sensibilities be called forth which 
freshen and brighten the daily routine of our daily- 
being, and cheer us when walking in the dry and 
dusty highways of the world's strife. 

To the precious revenue of these enjoyments the 
devotional temperament may be made to contribute as 
abundantly as the intellectual. He alone to the full 
extent feasts his soul amid the rich treasures of God's 
works who of that God is the humble, fervent, ador- 
ing worshiper. He alone comprehends in some 
degree that illimitable range of spiritual resources 
they supply, which cannot be described to those who 
know them not. 

These enjoyments are, happily, not the exclusive 
property of one little coterie or privileged class of 
human beings. Neither are they among those fluctu- 
ating sources of gratification that exhaust themselves 
in a few years, and then leave us desolate, mourning 
for what we can no longer grasp. If we once possess 
them, through life they stay by our side. We grow 
old, but God in His works, as in His Word, is the 
same yesterday, to-day, forever. While the earth 
remaineth, the beautiful vicissitudes of " seed-time 
and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day 
and night, shall not cease." The fashions of the 
times may change, and even a portion of its written 
learning from age to age grow obsolete, but the les- 
sons God teaches the heart in Nature are unchang- 



ENJOYMENT OF NATURE. 79 

ingly the same. The rolling year goes on, the glori- 
ous sun and the kindling star, the budding flower 
and the leafy forest, the arching firmament and the 
verdant landscape, still brighten and bloom for the 
children of earth ; still tell of *' the varied God ; " still 
say to us that He who created and who sustaineth 
these will much more clothe and care for ils, and will 
not that any one of us should perish. 

Memory here reverts to a husband and wife who, at 
the respective ages of sixty and seventy years, were 
accustomed to set forth on their evening walk to 
watch the last lingering loveliness of a summer sun- 
set with as much delight as in the buoyant, golden 
days of " love's young dream." The solemn beauty 
of the starry night, or the resplendent glory of the 
moon walking in brightness, still awakened in their 
souls a gushing fountain of enjoyment as genuine as 
it was unsatiating. They were as much interested in 
the training of the spring woodbine, the summer rose, 
the autumn marigold or convolvulus, in this their 
eventide of life, as when, in earlier days, they drew 
their beloved little ones to hail the first cowslip 
that peeped beneath the hedge, or encouraged them 
to seek for the early violet " half hidden from the 
eye " amid its concealing leaves. 

But they had not rested in the admiration of Nature 
as a beautiful abstraction ; they had looked up to 
Nature's God. From things seen and visible their 



80 ENJOYMENT OF NATURE. 

hearts had been lifted to things unseen and eternal. 
Hand in hand they had passed through many of 
earth's sorrows, but the voice of God's works, speak- 
ing in harmony with that of His Word, was never to 
them without a soothing and cheering influence. 
They were Christians ; and while their hope of Eter- 
nal Life was grounded upon the revelation of God in 
the volume of His Gospel, they saw in all the beauti- 
ful and varying forms of this natural world the lessons 
of a compassionate Father sent down on earth, the 
types of a holy habitation, an enduring rest, prepared 
for them in heaven. 




EVERY-DAY EXAMPLE. 



I HAVE often thought had I children to educate I 
could never voluntarily place them under the 
daily supervision of any instructor whose personal 
character I should be unwilling for them to resemble, 
since the observation, how trite soever is none the less 
true, that the influence of example, as given by parents 
and teachers, is incalculable. 

A great deal is continually said in religious papers 
respecting the solemn responsibility of Sunday-school 
teachers. I have been one during many years of my 
life, and for a still longer period my occupation on 
all other days of the week was that of a preceptor of 
youth. While hearing so much said by ministers and 
others of the mighty power for good wielded in the 
Sunday-school, and fully appreciating it, I often used 
to think (working as I was in both capacities) that the 
accountability devolving upon me for the lesson of my 
life and words in my every-day school was immeasur- 
ably greater. And though I ever faithfully strove to 
benefit religiously those who gathered round me for 
an hour on Sundays, I constantly felt that my possi- 
6 (8i) 



82 EVERY-DAY EXAMPLE. 

bilities of doing good to them were few and small, 
compared with those which Providence granted me all 
the rest of the week in hourly intercourse with the 
occupants of my school-room. I felt convinced that 
the spirit I daily carried into its cares and duties would 
inevitably make manifest to those around me whether 
I was trying to guide my life according to the maxims 
of worldly or of heavenly wisdom, and would, in some 
degree, insensibly act upon the hearts and minds with 
whom my own was there brought into contact. And 
without infusing the slightest theological tincture into 
any subject whatever, scarcely can a class go through 
even a lesson in reading, or a recitation in history, but 
opportunities are afforded of leaving some salutary 
impression upon the mind. The simplest comment 
made by a teacher may often indicate whether her own 
heart be most in sympathy with the spirit of the world 
or the spirit of Christ. In fact, no instructor can fail, 
however unconsciously, to show those under her 
charge whether she values most highly the honors 
and fashions of society or the approval of God, whether 
her great desire for herself and her pupils is to be ad- 
mired and popular among men, or to be conformed to 
the self-sacrificing, ennobling precepts of Christianity. 
The moral and religious power of her own character 
is, directly or indirectly, an influence among them all 
the day long. 

Would we, either as parents or teachers, inspire the 



EVERY-DAY EXAMPLE. 83 

youthful mind with holy principles and purposes, we 
must take special heed to the current of our own every- 
day lives. Who can measure the consequences of our 
utterances in conversation, the sentiments we express 
with regard to the actions of individuals either in public 
or private life? How easily while professing zeal for 
the spiritual welfare of the young may we mournfully 
counteract all we say and do on the subject by the way 
in which we sometimes allow ourselves to talk of 
things that are passing around us ! 

If we speak of worldly wealth as the one thing 
needful, and pronounce its possessors the fortunate of 
mankind without any recognition of the advantages it 
bestows in opening blessed and various channels for 
benevolent activity, how can we expect our children 
to honor and desire moral worth and Christian good- 
ness above earthly riches ? 

If they see that we think it indispensable to our 
happiness to be as elegantly attired and to live in as 
costly a style as our neighbors, how shall they, how 
can they, imagine that we hold in much esteem the 
ornament of a meek and quiet spirit? 

If they observe that we are fretful and complaining 
at every little untoward circumstance, permitting our- 
selves to be ruffled by perhaps the most trifling inci- 
dents, while they seldom hear us speak with gratitude 
of our blessings, or recognize the loving-kindness of 
our Heavenly Father in the daily gifts we receive 



84 EVERY-DAY EXAMPLE. 

from Him, can we suppose they will believe that the 
religion we profess is a principle animating our life? 

Kindly sympathy toward the poor, humanity and 
tenderness to dumb creatures, truthfulness even in 
little things — how inexpressibly important are all 
these ! yet how rarely inculcated or how totally over- 
looked by multitudes of professedly Christian mothers 
in the training of their little ones ! But can the spirit 
of true Christianity exist where these virtues are want- 
ing ? Are those young hearts being rightly molded 
for the Kingdom of Christ that have never been early 
taught to love and practice them ? 

I have known parents making a decided profession 
of piety, and continually expressing earnest desires 
for ** the conversion of their children," who are guilty 
of annually telling these children the unmitigated lie 
that " Krisskingle comes down the chimney and fills 
their stockings with presents," and who say they see 
no harm in it, though in doing so they are directly 
violating the letter and spirit of that religion whose 
corner-stone is Truth. 

I have heard other parents talk perpetually about 
Christian self-sacrifice who, if men, will not themselves 
forego even their tobacco, if women will not lay down 
a trimming or a bracelet from the adornment of their 
persons. 

Oh, would we leave blessed traces for Time and 
Eternity upon other minds, especially youthful ones, 



EVERY-DAY EXAMPLE. 



8s 



let us habitually, conscientiously, watch the tenor of our 
own. Let us pray that we may be aided to cultivate 
such a constant rightmindedness as shall preclude 
the possibility of our injuring, by our involuntary in- 
fluence, any of the rising generation among whom 
our lot may be cast, so that no omissions or commis- 
sions of ours may be the means of keeping back one 
of these little ones from the kingdom of heaven. 




THE SWALLOWS. 



Why is not my life as happy and graceful as that of the swallows ? Because 
they are innocent, confiding and unconscious, and fulfill all the laws of their being 
without any obstruction. — Mrs. L. M. Child. 

WHEN I first read this passage in the writings of 
a highly gifted woman, it seemed to me so 
beautiful that I did not stop to inquire, " Is it altogether 
true?" But on trying to analyze it I thought I per- 
ceived that there is not a perfect analogy between us 
and the " unconscious" swallows. 

The brute creation, so called, stand on a different 
plane from ourselves in regard to the laws of their 
being. They are by nature invested with positive in- 
stincts, which unerringly impel them in- all their ac- 
tions, the choice of their food, dwelling-places and 
general habits. They need no educating step by step, 
for nature is to them an immediate and infallible 
instructor. 

It is not thus with human beings. We, like them, 
it is true, have physical impulses, wants and desires, 
but we have no certain guidance implanted within, 
which unsought dii-Qcts us almost mechanically in their 

(86) 



THE SWALLOWS. 8/ 

proper exercise. This guidance never comes to tcs by 
instinct ; we only learn it through that voluntary self- 
regulation which is the gradual growth of reason and 
conscience ; and unless we carefully cultivate these, it 
is idle to talk about " fulfilling all the laws of our being 
without obstruction." Animals indeed are safely and 
"unconsciously" led by their natural propensities, 
since their instincts, the same in every generation, 
though unprogressive, control these propensities 
aright, but we have the whole lesson to learn each 
one for himself; it does not and will not come to any 
one of us ready made, and however assiduously we 
apply ourselves to learn it, many will be the '* obstruc- 
tions " we must encounter in the practice of our lesson 
which never trouble the swallows, either in the acquisi- 
tion or practice of theirs. 

One of those laws of our being which has been recog- 
nized by the wise and good of all ages, both in Chris- 
tian and in heathen nations, by Confucius, Socrates, 
Seneca and others, and which has been above all most 
impressively taught by the Divine Founder of Christi- 
anity is, that all true virtue is the fruit alone of earnest 
persevering effort to do right and to avoid wrong. 
That maxim which at the present day is sometimes 
enunciated with so plausible seeming, "Act out your 
own nature," is fraught with mischief and peril, and 
ought not to be adopted but with the most cautious 
reservation. For which of us has a nature that can 



88 THE SWALLOWS. 

without moral danger be " acted out " if unrestrained 
by the guard of strict moral principle ? Alas ! are 
not all the crimes that desolate and darken this poor 
world the result of their perpetrators having " acted 
out" their own ungoverned natures and passions? 
Only allow this maxim to gain secure footing as a 
correct one, and you deliberately throw wide open 
the floodgates of evil and misery upon society. 

Whenever our higher and nobler impulses are 
prompting our actions, tJiese we may gladly and law- 
fully follow, with safety, fearlessness and faithfulness, 
indifferent to the praise or blame of any human voice; 
but when the sordid or selfish predominates (and what 
child of earth does not sometimes need to watch against 
the ascendency of these?), let us then, so far from 
acting out our own nature, give all our efforts to curb, 
repress, resist, and, if possible, conquer it by the united 
force of a strong will, firm principle, and the grace of 
God. 




EARLY INFLUENCE. 



INFLUENCE is an all-potent engine for good or 
for evil. No character, great or humble, is formed 
without its instrumentality. No life passes whose 
daily course bears not traces of influence as its re- 
cipient ; nor any whose daily course casts not some 
lights and shadows around it on others as its creator. 
From the first dawn of being we are each and every 
one its subjects ; and let us live as long as we may, 
we shall never become absolutely independent of its 
authority. 

If character is modified, and to some extent created, 
by influence, what must be its importance as connected 
with the opening springtime of existence — its earliest 
tendencies in bending that twig, according to the 
direction of which " the tree inclines?" The healthful 
dew of night is not more silent, the poisonous miasma 
not more unheeded, than many of the early influences 
that most powerfully affect the mind's subsequent 
history and character. We are formed by them, and 
we know it not. Thus the whole mental superstruc- 
ture is created, partly irrespective of ourselves ; and 

(89) 



90 EARLY INFLUENCE. 

we may become an almost " patriarch pupil" in the 
school of influences before we are led to analyze their 
origin and progress. 

Those of the home circle, and especially of the 
maternal relation, are proverbially powerful beyond 
all others. From Rebecca, whose evil counsel incul- 
cated on her favorite Jacob the principle and practice 
of deceit, to the mother of Byron, creating, by her 
unnatural coldness and cruelty toward her child, 
the almost malignant misanthrope of his age — from 
Hannah, lending her son " for life unto the Lord," 
to the mother and grandmother whose " unfeigned 
faith" dwelt in Timothy also — the world of great as 
well as minor minds has been swayed and shaped by 
maternal guidance. 

We all know who said that his mother's kiss made 
him a painter ; we cannot forget whose varied and 
wonderful linguadental attainments were traced by 
himself to the encouragement his infant impulses 
received, as a mother's voice gently answered his 
unceasing appeals for knowledge with, " Read, and 
you will know." We cannot forget that he whose 
" Rise and Progress " has gone through the length 
and breadth of many lands, referred his own love for 
the Sacred Scriptures to those hours when his mother 
read to him the stories of Holy Writ from the Dutch 
tiles in the old fire-place ; nor that his contemporary, 
whose spiritual songs have, like those of David, gone 



EARLY INFLUENCE. 9 1 

Up to God on the lips of thousands, had the lesson of 
mine and thine ineffaceably engraved on his little mind, 
when bringing, at the age of three years, a pin from 
the house of a neighbor, by being sent back by his 
mother to restore even that trifle to its owner. 

The world of early influences is an extensive one. 
Influences whisper to the youthful bosom from nature, 
from history, from poetry, from science, from art. In- 
fluences come to us in life's first years from all that 
surrounds us ; from the very first books we read with 
avidity; the first names in learning that arrest our 
attention ; the first strains of music that touch our 
soul; the first voice to which we listen in public that 
speaks with the stirring tones of eloquence ; the first 
epithets that we hear appended to certain mental 
qualities, whether noble or ignoble ; the first associa- 
tions with which the things of time and sense are 
spoken of by those around us, as compared with 
things immaterial and eternal. There are influences 
caught from the garden and the meadow, the streamlet 
and the sky ; from the floating cloud and the fading 
sunset; from the wind in the woods and the chirp of 
the grasshopper ; influences which modify and color 
the nature of all our subsequent associations with the 
objects themselves. And who cannot point to some 
volume or volumes, the frequent perusal of which 
modeled his taste and formed a kind of touchstone 
by which he learned to judge of others? 



92 EARLY INFLUENCE. 

Early influences are abiding ones. Their authority 
over even the maturely developed mind is mighty ; 
nor can the combined forces of reason and conviction 
and judgment always avail to disenthrall it from their 
dominion. Even the giant intellect of Dr. Johnson 
was inadequate to emancipate itself from the weak 
superstitions engendered in his infant breast by hob- 
goblin nursery tales, which were the annoyance of 
his imagination throughout life. We take the " hue 
and coloring " of our mental habits, and even of our 
prejudices, from those around us; and, unfortunately, 
in being acted upon by surrounding influences, the 
affinities of our minds for these are not always purely 
elective. Many of them are indeed involuntary; and 
so much easier is it to surrender ourselves to lower 
than to assimilate toward higher ones, that the 
unpropitious ofttimes gain the ascendency over the 
healthful. How vitally essential, then, is it that the 
character of the associations which cluster around 
our youthful years be both morally and intellectually 
such as the heart may acknowledge with gratitude 
and delight throughout the after-pages of its history ! 
The keynote in music, giving character to a whole 
piece, is not more important than that keynote of the 
future character which is generally given within the 
walls of Home. 

Unhappily, though the voice of the few, speaking 
to us from good books and good men, declares the 



EARLY INFLUENCE. 93 

words of truth and soberness, yet that of the many 
sets forth the praises of wealth, power, folly and 
fashion; and the eternal realities and sublime re- 
sources of our higher being are scarcely named, or 
slightingly, as castles in the air. Those enjoy a 
peculiar privilege whose early estimates of good and 
evil, of right and wrong, have not been formed upon 
the teachings of the crowd ; whose principles and" 
tastes have been molded upon such models and 
such standards as ever lead them to place the animal 
above the intellectual, the social above the selfish, the 
valuable above the splendid ; and, finally, the things 
seen and temporal below the things unseen and 
eternal. 

There could hardly be presented a more beautiful 
illustration of the nature and workings of a high 
intellectual and moral influence upon the formation 
of character than in Fenelon's admirable Telemachus. 
Young, ardent, enthusiastic, inclined to yield himself 
to the impulse of the moment without duly consider- 
ing whither it would lead him, evil ofttimes appeared 
to him as good and good as evil ; unaided by strength 
superior to his own, his steps would surely have 
failed a thousand and a thousand times, amid the 
hidden pitfalls and quicksands which environed them. 

But behold how gently, yet prevailingly, the holy 
guidance of wisdom leads him along ! mildly control- 
ling his choice without annihilating it ; guiding, not 



94 EARLY INFLUENCE. 

binding, his will ! No Rinaldo, hewing down at one 
stroke the tree with whose fall all the illusions of the 
enchanted garden vanished, this heavenly guardian, 
with gradual growth of power, quietly walks by his 
side through the voluptuous bowers of Calypso, 
counteracts her siren words of flattery, shields him 
from her fascinations, and, after bringing him victori- 
ously through many minor conflicts, enables him at 
last even to withstand awhile the rising strength of 
a pure and virtuous attachment, rather than that 
anything should clash with his one settled purpose 
and duty, his return to Ithaca. His struggles between 
inclination and honor, between weakness and resolu- 
tion, the expedients by which he endeavors to hide 
from his own view the secret disguises of his heart, 
are delicately and truthfully delineated, and commend 
themselves to the experience of all who have entered 
in good earnest on the conflict and combat of life. 

Let us review those influences that have in some 
measure formed our own minds, and ask ourselves 
the question, "Who can tell what each of us is daily 
doing for others ? " We need not be parents, or even 
professionally teachers, to accomplish something in 
this matter. For to each of us it is given to stir some 
little wave of influence in the mighty sea of mind ; to 
leave behind us some *' footprint on the sands of time." 

Let us see to it that the tendency of our influence 
is such as may tell for good upon those who receive 



EARLY INFLUENCE. 95 

it. Let not our example, our deportment, the spirit 
and tenor of our lives lead those around us to feel, or 
even to appear \.o feel, that so far as we are concerned, 
" to eat, drink and be clothed," according to the way 
or fashion of the surrounding world, is in our view 
the chief good of human life. Let us try to draw 
from a purer, brighter atmosphere, from " an ampler 
ether and diviner air," the daily breath of our own 
spirits, that we may infuse some portion of its invigo- 
rating impulses into those around us. Let us feel that 
each of us can do and ought to do something to 
elevate the principle and practice of the rising age. 
That is an utterly false humility which declines all 
such efforts on the weak but fashionable plea of those 
efforts being too insignificant to oppose the torrent, 
too unimportant to be of any value. 

Drops make up the shower ; grains the ant-hill ; 
single lines of light the whole concentrated effluence 
of the glorious sun. We may feel that we can be 
but that drop, that grain ; and that if even a single 
line of light be emitted from our moral pathway, it 
must be indeed faint as that of the gray and trembling 
dawn. But if we may venture to hope that only one 
mind, which is hereafter to act on life's great stage 
when we shall be withdrawn from it, shall be able to 
look back and refer to any instrumentality of ours the 
formation of one good principle, the power of increas- 
ing others' welfare, or its own true happiness ; if we 



96 



EARLY INFLUENCE. 



can lead even a little child by the glorious fountain 
of intellectual delights, or the more glorious fountain 
of living waters, and in the footsteps of Him whose 
favor is life, and whose loving-kindness better than 
life, more blessed shall we be in the great day of His 
appearing than if we had '' subdued kingdoms " or 
" taken a strong city." 




OUR SOCIAL DEPENDENCES. 



A CERTAIN independence of the world with re- 
gard to our enjoyments is not only desirable, 
but necessary to be attained by all who aspire to a life 
of rational happiness. It is the part of wisdom to 
render our best pleasures of such a nature that they 
shall be as little dependent as possible on the will of 
others, and sufficiently in our own power to place 
them within our reach in hours of loneliness and 
seclusion. To be e7itii'ely unindebted to our fellow- 
creatures, however, for any portion of our resources for 
enjoyment, can never be the pride of an amiable mind, 
much less the boast of a discriminating one. Such an 
independence is indeed totally unattainable, for if we 
reflect upon our daily wants as well as our daily en- 
joyments, we shall find that links imperceptible bind 
us to each other. Even if we contemplate those 
pleasures and pursuits which are most our own, and 
which are co}nparatively least connected with social 
auxiliaries, we shall perceive they have flowed through 
a thousand little channels in which our fellow-creatures 
have been engaged to serve us. 
7 (97) 



98 OUR SOCIAL DEPENDENCES. 

Do those who delight in treading the accHvities of 
science, and exploring the stores of art, imagine that 
for these sources of delight and improvement they are 
wholly unindebted to any but themselves ? How 
much of the labor of their forerunners has been be- 
stowed in investigating those truths, in recording those 
discoveries, in elucidating those researches, with which 
it now only remains for them to become acquainted ! 
Small would be the progress of science, limited the 
attainments of art, were each adventurer in their paths 
compelled to commence an unexplored track alone, 
and scanty indeed must be the perfection to which 
that traveler in either would arrive, who was not 
guided in his way by the illuminations thrown upon 
it from the lights placed at distances along the road 
by his predecessors. Everywhere other minds have 
toiled for our harvest. How many have been em- 
ployed in arranging the arguments whose convincing 
truth wins our understanding, the ideas whose sub- 
limity and beauty fill us with delight, in combining 
the images whose bright impressions reflect luster on 
our own minds, in delineating those exquisite touches 
of soul and thought which we retrace with rapture 
and glow as we survey ! 

Nor is it alone the superior part of our species, as 
regards their contributions to even our intellectual 
pleasure and progress, upon whom we shall find reason 
to look with feelings of sincere obligation. How 



OUR SOCIAL DEPENDENCES. 99 

many hands have been busied in preparing the press, 
in arranging the types, which must be set in motion 
in order to present to our acceptance the smallest vol- 
ume which offers us its mental treasure ! Could we 
take up even a sheet of paper or a pen had not social 
aids been previously employed in making them ready 
for our use ? 

We are indebted to our contemporaries as well as 
our predecessors, to those we regard as our inferiors 
as well as to our superiors and our equals. In the 
unbroken flow of our daily comforts, too, we are bound 
by innumerable obligations to the lowliest and hum- 
blest of our kind. Those nameless, numberless little 
offices of kindness and attention which smooth the 
pillow of sickness, lighten the weight of sorrow, or 
soften the languor of depression, are often performed 
for us by those to whom the volume of science or 
taste is something hermetically sealed. The culti- 
vated European once received support from the hand 
held out to him by an untutored child of the African 
desert. There are moments, there are seasons in life 
of sorrow and sadness, when it is sweeter to the droop- 
ing soul to meet in a companion the sympathizing tear 
or smile than the profoundest depth of intellect, when 
the bosom, worn with anxious thought and corroding 
solicitude, and incapacitated for the prouder flights of 
the spirit, is glad to resign the exertions and energies 
of the head for those interchanges of sympathetic 



[00 



OUR SOCIAL DEPENDENCES. 



feeling which shed beams of comfort and brightness 
on the heart. 

Therefore we will not weakly pride ourselves on a 
fancied independence of others, which, were it even 
possible, would be undesirable ; nor foolishly value 
ourselves on those mental resources which we owe to 
native bias of mind or early opportunities, since by the 
evident design of a superior Power it is so ordered 
that we are all rendered so mutually dependent, so 
linked together by our needs as well as our comforts 
and pleasures, that in Apostolic language neither can 
say to the other, " I have no need of you." 




THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL SELFISHNESS. 



I 



What hast thou that thou hast not received? 

F we are accustomed to consider every gift of mind 
with which we have been intrusted as but 

A loan to be repaid with use, 



we shall continually be made watchful under the ap- 
prehension lest we should not render up a just ac- 
count of our stewardship, lest we should bury or 
widely misemploy that talent which an Almighty 
Hand has committed to our care. 

A mind correctly tutored and rightly regulated feels 
that if its sphere is wider than that of another, it has 
more assigned it to perform. It will behold the field 
of duty and of action extend with its extended powers, 
and will be kept humble under the watchful fear, the 
salutary solicitude, lest it should fail in rendering up 
its just tribute unto the Most High. 

Why are intellectual treasures intrusted to us ? 
That we may wrap ourselves up in selfish contempla- 
tion of them, proudly glorying in their value? No; 
thus the mere philosopher or poet may allow himself to 
think and feel, as from his little world of mental luxury 

(lOl) 



I02 THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL SELFISHNESS. 

he looks down upon the throng around him; but this 
the Christian, who is taught by a better and nobler 
principle of action, will not, cannot, dares not do. He 
will feel that if high capacities are given him it is that 
they may be devoted to a high application, and that 
if their possession in any degree enlarges the circle of 
his enjoyments, so surely does it also of his duties. 
Instead of viewing himself as a being at liberty to revel 
in the monopoly of individual gratification, he will 
regard himself as accountable for the application of 
his every talent to Him from whojn he received it, and 
who gave it, not that it might concentrate its benefits 
upon himself alone, but that it might be instrumental 
in blessing and enriching others. He will recognize 
it as his duty to be kindly interested in all within the 
the sphere of his influence, even though they may not 
always be from taste, companionable, or from according 
feeling, congenial. He will endeavor from motives, the 
mere selfishly intellectual never knew, to promote their 
comforts, their joys, their improvement. He will not 
allow himself to turn in disgust from the coarseness 
which shocks his refinement, or the narrowness of con- 
ception which comprehends not his sentiments, nor 
will he allow himself to cast the glance of supercilious 
disdain upon the low range of objects and occupations 
which makes up the whole little capital of perhaps the 
majority of minds. He will have learned not only to 
bear with these, but even to surmount, in a measure, 



THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL SELFISHNESS. IO3 

the undue sensitiveness with which he may have been 
inclined to shrink from them. 

A mind taught by the self-denying precepts of 
Christianity will find, in the course of the duties such 
views involve, that taste would often decline those 
sacrifices ^n\(\q\v principle commands, but the time may 
come when it will be happy enough to find *' flowers 
of brighter pleasure in the field of duty " than it could 
ever have gathered from the garden of unregulated 
inclination. 

There are other congenialities, too, besides intellect- 
ual ones. The sacred chain of cementing principles 
will unite, and closely, our hearts with some, toward 
whom no approximation of taste or pursuits invites us. 

Yes ; there are many experienced in the school of 
true wisdom who were never taught in that of intel- 
lectual refinement, and many prepare to shine as stars 
in the heavenly kingdom on whom the beams of 
earthly mental glory have shed but few and feeble 
rays. Many who are deeply learned in the resigna- 
tion of the heart, the sacrifices of the will, whose 
minds the kindlings of lofty thought never illumined, 
who have faithfully trod their little daily routine of 
duties in untiring constancy without even a knowl- 
edge of those theories on which their structure is 
erected, who are practiced in that spiritual discipline 
which alone can lead them and us through earth be- 
low to heaven above. 



I04 THE SIN OF INTELLECTUAL SELFISHNESS. 

Let US allow these reflections to exercise their full 
force upon our minds. They may be humbling, but 
they will be salutary, and while we render a tribute of 
grateful praise to our Creator for those rich mental 
treasures which open to our souls such uncounted 
sources of refined enjoyment, let us remember the 
claims they bring on us for added usefulness and 
higher excellence. And when these bestowments give 
us to see with more vivid clearness and power the 
duties of probationary existence and the weight of re- 
ligious realities, let us ever bear in memory the admo- 
nition transmitted by Divine bequeathment : 

If ye kno7u these things, happy are ye if ye do them. 




PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS OF A REAL 
CHILDHOOD. 



H 



OW well I remember the little town of B- 



My parents removed thither from London, 
my native city, when I was scarcely three years old; 
and there were passed the hours blest above all other 
hours of life, in the first fresh and joyous sensations 
of existence, in utter freedom from every care or 
sorrow. 

B consisted principally of one long and wide 

street, whose houses were, in general, closely built, 
with gardens behind them, surrounded by a country 
beautifully undulating, amid pleasant walks through 
meadows, lanes and woods. The countenances of 
many of our then neighbors, and their general appear- 
ance, are still distinctly present to my memory after 
a lapse of more than forty years. I can even now 
see our opposite neighbor, Mr. H., the saddler, as, 
with leathern apron on, he occasionally came to his 
door and looked up and down the street ; little Mr. 
U., the shoemaker, ever sitting at his last ; Mrs. M., 
the grocer, with white muslin cap bound round her 

(105) 



I06 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

head by a broad band of the same material ; Mr. L., 
a very old gentleman (or such he seemed to me), with 
gray overcoat and walking-stick; Mr. H., the tailor, 
whose Sunday suit was a bright blue coat and brighter 
metal buttons ; old Mr. and Mrs. T., who always went 
out and came in side by side. I remember querying 
with myself why the landlord of the "Crown Inn" 
was called Mr. Goodman, and the landlord of the 
" Rising Sun," Mr. Fairchild ; and I recollect the 
utter abhorrence with which I looked on Mr. S. and 
Mr. O., because they were butchers, and wondering 
much whether Mr. J., who followed the same occupa- 
tion, and who died when I was, perhaps, six years 
old, coidd possibly have gone to heaven after having 
shed the blood of so many innocent and unoffending 
dumb creatures. 

I remember where the parish church stood at the 
foot of a hill a little way out of the town, in a 
churchyard crowded with graves, and being first 
taken to walk there one Sunday evening by my father 
and mother, when all the surrounding scene was 
bathed in the soft glow of the setting sun. I recol- 
lect the red-haired preacher of the Calvinist place of 
worship, Mr. C, and the more gentlemanly looking 
occupant of the pulpit of what was called the Inde- 
pendent meeting-house, tall, pale Mr. T. I used to 
look at Mr. and Mrs. A., as they drove past in their 
elegant barouche or dashing curricle, with some curi- 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS, ID/ 

osity to know if they were any happier than others 
for being decidedly the richest people and owners of 

the handsomest residence in B . From one of 

our walks we could just discern in the blue distance 

H , the seat of Lord P , about whom and 

whose surroundings, as he was the only titled indi- 
vidual in the neighborhood, I felt some little childish 
curiosity — a curiosity that was never gratified, as the 
inhabitants of B appeared to know very little re- 
specting him. 

I was an only daughter and the eldest child. My 
parents, having intellectual tastes, were fond to enthu- 
siasm of reading, nature, country walks, and general 
mental cultivation. Though only in moderate cir- 
cumstances, they always regarded it as one of the 
necessaries of life to have good books for themselves, 
and such as were best fitted to develop and instruct 
the youthful mind for their children. One of my dear 

father's reasons for removing from London to B 

was to place us under the superior moral and intel- 
lectual advantages which he believed a country home 
possessed over one in the great metropolis. This led 
him to purchase and remove to the house where we 

lived in B , to which was attached a large and 

well-cultivated garden, opening at the lower end into 
a beautiful orchard, where daisies and buttercups 
threw their golden and roseate bloom upon the green 
grass, presenting a picture which filled me with 



I08 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

ecstasy. We had neither peaches, nectarines nor 
apricots, for in England these are ze^^//-fruit, and our 
garden was inclosed by only a low fence ; but the 
finest of currants — red, white and black — plums, gage, 
muscle and Orleans ; gooseberries of seven or eight 
varieties ; apples of several kinds ; strawberries, rasp- 
berries, damsons, bullaces, cherries, pears — it furnished 
in profusion ; while its vegetables of various kinds 
supplied our table, and a space set apart for a flower 
garden was my especial delight. How very long it 
seemed then from one summer or winter to another ! 
The peeping up of the first snowdrop or crocus, the 
brightening of the gooseberry bushes into leaf, the 
appearance of the first strawberry blossoms, the earli- 
est bloom on the apple trees, the opening of the fra- 
grant beanflower, each was watched for as a new and 
separate signal of delight. 

I inherited the tastes of my parents, and my earli- 
est-remembered pleasures are books and the beauties 
of natural scenery. So early did I learn to read that 
I have never been able to remember how that acqui- 
sition was made, but I well recollect that a little pre- 
vious to my fourth year I had no difficulty in reading 
any book which fell in my way. As one method of 
early cultivating a literary taste in her little girl, my 
dear mother adopted the practice of reading aloud to 
me from any book she herself was perusing such pas- 
sages as she judged suited to my comprehension. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I Op 

She had from childhood been accustomed to make 
rather copious extracts from her reading when the 
volume happened to be one borrowed from a friend, 
or taken from the circulating library ; thus she had 
several large volumes in her own handwriting, con- 
sisting of selections from multitudes of good and 
valuable authors, both in poetry and prose. Previous 
to her marriage, my mother had enjoyed unbounded 
leisure; and after becoming engaged in the cares of a 
house of her own she still continued the practice she 
had commenced in youth. This was not done by the 
neglect of any domestic duty, either in the direction 
of her family or the employments of the needle, but 
by redeeming for this purpose the hours which many 
women give to idle calls or to needless personal 
adornment. And in reading these manuscripts to me 
before I was seven years old my little ear and mind 
became familiarized with the pastorals and elegies of 
Shenstone, many of the eclogues and miscellaneous 
poems of Southey, the beautiful sonnets of Mrs. Char- 
lotte Smith and Anna Seward, " Lucy by the Dove" 
and " We are Seven," by Wordsworth ; Montgomery's 
" Grave," and some strains of Beattie and Cowper, as 
well as many of the finest passages in Blair's Sermons, 
and in various other standard writers of poetry and 
prose. These I never tired of hearing again and 
again ; and one intense, enthusiastic wish seized upon 
my soul, that /, W, might be able some day to write 



no PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

such books as should delight many readers, and pre- 
serve my name to another generation. Alas ! poor 
child ! doomed in thy very first aspirations to yearn 
after the unattainable ! 

My parents put into my hands for my first reading 
the excellent juvenile works of Mrs. Anna Lsetitia 
Barbauld and Maria Edgeworth. To the " Early 
Lessons " of the former, as well as her charming 
" Hymns in Prose for Infant Minds," and the '' Frank 
and Rosamond " and the " Harry and Lucy " of the 
latter, I owe, in common, doubtless, with hundreds of 
other children, more than I can express of enjoyment 
and improvement. I used to long for Frank and Rosa- 
mond as companions ; the rabbits and the hyacinths 
of Rosamond were realities to me, though I had no 
rabbits or, as it happened, among my flowers any 
hyacinths. These admirable little books, in conjunc- 
tion with home influences, gave my mind a disposition 
to observe, to compare, to reflect, both with regard to 
natural objects and moral subjects, and to the conse- 
quences of our actions in their bearing on the happi- 
ness or misery of our lives. A taste was also excited 
for making little collections of c2iriosities^ as I called 
them, and before my eighth year I had quite a variety 
of shells, pebbles, coins, birds' feathers and insects' 
wings, never, however, feeling tempted to destroy one 
little life to furnish an addition to my stores. 

"Paul and Virginia" was one of my early books. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. Ill 

From reading there the pathetic story of the runaway 
slave, and from hearing my dear mother read from her 
manuscript volumes Mrs. Opie's " Negro Boy's Tale," 
and the " Dying Negro" of Mr. Day, I learned to 
hate slavery with all my little might, in which feeling 
I was strengthened by my parents' detestation of it, 
as well as the earnest interest with which they read 
aloud in the family, when I was a few years older, 
Clarkson's '' History of the Abolition of the Slave 
Trade." Little did I then imagine that in after-life I 
should hear many professedly Christian teachers try- 
ing to represent this monstrous iniquity as an insti- 
tution which ought to be protected by good govern- 
ment, and even sanctioned and upheld on Christian 
principles. 

Early I delighted in the Bible. A chapter was 
read in the family every morning by my dear father 
as a devotional exercise, followed by a prayer, some- 
times extemporaneous, sometimes from a book of his 
own preparation ; but this daily reading did not suf- 
fice to me, who never tired of pouring over the histor- 
ical books of the Old Testament or the Gospels of 
the New. Soon arose in my young mind the anxious 
questions to which, for some minds, no " Eureka " ever 
comes on this side of the grave. I think I must have 
been about six years old when, having reflected upon 
Abel's offering and its acceptance by the Lord, I 
came to the conclusion that since God had thus man- 



I 1 2 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

ifested His approval of Abel, He could certainly, if He 
pleased, in the same way manifest His approval of me. 
My mother had that morning given me leave to pick 
up for my own the first apples I found under our jen- 
neting tree. I discovered two, and it occurred to me 
that this would be an opportunity to make the trial; 
and as it was really a little effort of self-denial to 
forego eating them, I thought God might /^j-^/^/;/ wel- 
come it as He had done the offering of Abel. Rever- 
ently I laid the apples beneath the tree, and, turning 
away, knelt down and lifted up my heart in earnest 
prayer that if the Lord regarded me as worthy of His 
approval He would be pleased to send down fire and 
consume them. 1 scarcely, however, expected the ful- 
fillment of my desire, and was more sorry than sur- 
prised when, on rising from my knees, I beheld my 
fruit untouched. But why is it so ? I said to myself, 
and remember coming to the conclusion that God 
would, perhaps, be willing to do as much for me as 
for His servant of old, but that I recollected having 
heard my parents say the day of miracles had passed. 
At an early age I met with a History of England and 
with Goldsmith's " Rome," both of which I studied so 
assiduously that the leading events and characters in 
each were soon perfectly familiar to me ; also with 
some volumes of Natural History which I read so 
intently that, although I have never become at all 
scientific, a foundation was laid for that relish of gen- 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. II3 

^r^/knowledge which renders all natural objects doubly 
interesting. When not more than nine years old I 
used to draw up little sets of questions and answers, and 
write papers, on the characteristics and habits of ani- 
mals, for my own amusement and the improvement of 
my brothers. When about six and a half, my dear 
mother proposed I should write a letter to my only 
living grandparent, her mother, for from six years old 
I became my own scribe. This was done with much 
alacrity, but in the letter were two misspelled words 
which seemed to me rather a pardonable error. Not 
so, however, thought my mother, who told me that bad 
spelling was disgraceful ; that I might exercise my own 
choice about rewriting it, but that tJiis could not go, 
and that if I wished grandmamma to receive an epistle 
from me, I must be willing to write a correct one. I 
was wise enough to be willing; consequently, I set to 
work and prepared one which was forthwith dis- 
patched and received much praise from my grand- 
mother. 

Before I could write myself, however, I made one 
or two attempts to " lisp in numbers," and when I was 
four years old my dear father took down a little verse 
or two from my childish lips. And from the age of 
seven my extreme longing to be a writer found way 
in producing a few pages of prose or verse on family 
birthdays or other occasions, sometimes with a dedica- 
tion to the dear father or mother to whom they were 
8 



114 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

specially addressed. How very happy I was in pen- 
ning these little volumes ! Two or three which have 
escaped detection I look at even now with feelings 
mingled and inexpressible. Those to whom they 
were addressed rest within the grave ; no ! rather let 
me say, rest in heaven ! 

The window of my sleeping-room opened upon a 
view of the western sky. From this window, being 
always sent to bed very early, I used in summer to 
watch the evening clouds and the setting sun before I 
went to sleep. Never since have there been to me 
such sunsets of glory ! At no period of my life has 
the happiness derived from sensation and perception 
been so vivid, so perfect, as previous to eight years 
of age. The world seemed just as beautiful as it was 
new; nature and books yielded me the most exquisite 
enjoyment ; my health was uninterrupted. Never 
since has my heart been able to give itself up so com- 
pletely to that utter fullness of delight which the sun- 
set clouds, a clear starry night, the pale, pure moon, 
or a bright rainbow then bestowed upon me. My 
parents loved to take their little ones through the 
fields and lanes to enjoy a morning or evening ramble; 
and oh ! what happiness it was to stroll along the 
banks so thickly set with primroses, above which 
rose hedges of hawthorn mingled with woodbine and 
eglantine ; to hunt for violets or bluebells, and to see 
the golden broom like a yellow blaze across the com- 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. II5 

mon, to survey the blue hills gently edging the distant 
horizon, with here and there a church spire, or a wind- 
mill whose slowly-turning vanes added to the land- 
scape's form and color the charm of gentle motion. 
Then the birds, which, as an American writer says, 
"sang as only the birds in England can sing;" the 
little cat that accompanied us a few rods on our walk 
and then turned back to await our coming home. 
Am I mistaken in regarding these as the happiest 
days I have ever known ? I think not. With the 
development of the reflective faculties, it is true, come 
wider and deeper joys, but tJiese are never perfectly 
unmingled with cares, with fears, with either personal 
sorrows or sorrows arising from sympathy with others, 
and those which flow from Life's immeasurably various 
forms of suffering. There is in mature life, as some 
one expresses it, " always a burden of thought bear- 
ing on the wheels of enjoyment." Then there was 
none; no saddening retrospect of any painful past, no 
anxious anticipation of any precarious future. 

In my sixth year I was sent to school, but was re- 
moved at the end of one quarter, my parents having 
by this time wisely, as I think, decided that my home 
progress in my own little studies under their direction 
was more real and rapid than at "Miss C 's Board- 
ing and Day School for Young Ladies," which an- 
nouncement met the eye conspicuously in front of the 
little Alma Mater for the daughters of B . Of the 



Il6 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

three months spent there I retain but faint recollec- 
tion, except that nearest my seat in the school-room 
were two sisters, dressed in deep mourning, whose 
looks I rather liked ; but one being only five years old 
(/was nearly six) seemed to me too much my junior 
for an acquaintance, while the other, who was seven, 
appeared decidedly too far above me in age for me to 
think of as a companion. Amusing as this appears 
now, the position was a perfectly real onQ then. Never 
had I indeed throughout my childhood a single child- 
associate ; none of the children of my parents' few 
acquaintance in the place seemed to them brought up 
with sufficient moral and intellectual care to be ad- 
vantageous companions ; and I was so happy in my 
mother's society, my various little pursuits, my books, 
my pen, my poor attempts at drawing maps and ani- 
mals, my flower-beds, my walks with my parents and 
brothers, the butterflies and birds and all surrounding 
nature, that I do not remember ever 07ice longing after 
what most children call a playmate. I did think, 
however, that I should be delighted to know Miss 
Edgeworth's Harry and Lucy and Frank and Rosa- 
mond, who seemed to me as living beings as any of 
the kings or queens of history had ever been. If my 
parents had visitors I listened attentively to all the 
conversation, and was much gratified whenever a few 
words were addressed to me personally to encourage 
me in my love of learning or my wish to be good. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 11/ 

My excellent parents from the first dawn of reason 
in my infant mind took intensely earnest pains to im- 
plant in it the love of virtue, and the sense of account- 
ability toward God, and implicit obedience to the Divine 
precepts of our Lord Jesus Christ, as the only true 
foundation for happiness here or hereafter. They did 
not talk to me in a technical manner about inheriting 
a corrupt nature, but they did constantly point out to 
me the actual and personal defects of my own charac- 
ter, the particular ways in which children are most in 
danger of doing wrong, and the need and duty of con- 
stant watchfulness over myself, and daily prayer to 
God that He would strengthen me in every effort to 
do what was well-pleasing in His sight. They taught 
me that no one can be good without that help which 
Cometh from above, and that we are never safe in the 
way of well-doing unless we continually ask that help 
of our Heavenly Father. They took great pains to 
awaken in my young mind the lively and quickening 
action of conscience, and they were in a great measure 
successful, for I believe I never yielded to indolence, 
self-will or irritation of temper (which I am sorry to 
say I too often did) without feeling that I was sinning 
against my better nature as well as against my Creator. 
And I think, yea, am sure, that parents and others 
often err very greatly when they say in reference to 
violence of temper or disobedience in a child, *' Oh ! 
they are nothing but children ! they don't know any 



Il8 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

better now, poor little things !" They do in general, 
if blest with ordinary good sense, " know better now." 
I believe the little duties and little sins of childhood 
are just as faithfully approved or reproved by a child's 
conscience, in most cases, as are our greater duties and 
sins by our more fully developed consciences. Of 
course, I am speaking of those children who are born 
and reared under an ordinary degree of good example 
and training, sadly imperfect, alas, as that too often is 
even among well-intentioned parents, and not of those 
unfortunate little creatures who have, from infancy, 
been brought up in the haunts of vice, and do not 
even know the difference between right and wrong. 

Among Dr. Watts' Hymns for Children, most of 
which I committed to memory when between five and 
eight years of age, is one in which occurs this couplet: 

How senseless is my heart and wild ! 
How vain are all my thoughts ! 

These lines gave me great pain, for I felt that though 
I frequently did wrong and needed daily to ask for- 
giveness of God for my daily faults, yet that my 
thoughts were not " <?//vain," nor my heart " senseless 
and wild." I knew that I took constant delight in 
gaining useful knowledge, in reading good and in- 
structive books, and in thinking much about my 
Heavenly Protector and the life to come ; therefore I 
could not repeat these lines without feeling that in 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I 1 9 

applying them to myself I was uttering an untruth. 
How wrong it is to put expressions of such unquali- 
fied self-depreciation into the lips of little children, 
who either repeat them mechanically without at all 
considering their meaning, or are taught to believe 
that telling such absolute falsehoods is only Christian 
humility. In a beautiful and noble hymn of Dyer, 
the writer says : 

Children, whose httle minds, unform'd, 
Ne'er rais'd a tender thought to heaven. 

I remember to have wept over these lines bitterly. 
They seemed to me a cruel libel on childhood ; for 
well I knew that my own " little mind " did " raise 
many a tender thought to heaven," and I believe 
prayer for help to do right has seldom in later life 
ascended from my heart more earnestly (certainly not 
more sincerely) to God than at the early age of seven 
or eight years. The very first effort of my thoughts 
in composition found expression in devotional aspira- 
tions. 

We lived at B in a very retired manner. My 

father's tastes, unfortunately for his worldly interests, 
were too intellectual to admit of his engaging suc- 
cessfully in the competitions of the business world ; so 
that while those whose mental view was pretty much 
bounded by pounds, shillings and pence pressed on- 
ward in the career of pecuniary prosperity, he could 



I20 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

never do more than provide a very moderate support 
for his family. But to my father I owe far more than 
thousands of silver and gold could have conferred on 
me, for he taught me to cultivate the rich, blessed and 
eternal resources of the mind and heart ; he instilled 
into my soul that love of intellectual pleasures, that 
high appreciation of moral and religious excellence 
which have taught me to regard the show and glitter 
of life, and even its innocent indulgences, as but dross 
and dust in comparison with higher things. 

When I was nearly seven years old, my father took 
me with him on a visit to my maternal grandmother, 
who lived in Dover, Kent. In going thither we had 
to make a journey of nearly one hundred miles — my 
j^rst journey since I was three years of age. Every 
day was like a life-time of excitement, and every hour 
a new era in existence. In passing through the 
county of Essex the view of Tilbury Fort had some 
attractions for me as the place where Queen Elizabeth 
addressed her troops when about to encounter the 
formidable Spanish Armada. I was charmed with the 
luxuriant hop gardens of Kent, with the sight of 
Rochester Cathedral, the bridge, at a short distance, 
spanning " the clear, silver Medway," and my heart 
bounded as we approached the ancient city of Can- 
terbury, dear to me as the scene of many little pas- 
sages in my beloved mother's early years. At evening 
my father and I left the inn, and walked out to visit 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 121 

Canterbury Cathedral. There, as my eyes rested on 
the magnificently painted window which is one of its 
principal attractions, the splendor of color, varying 
through every gradation of crimson, purple, blue, 
green and gold, filled me with a feeling of happiness 
akin to that which has often been awakened by con- 
templating the rich hues around the setting sun. The 
story of Thomas a Becket being familiar to me, I was 
extremely anxious to see his tomb, and after gazing 
earnestly on the scene of the Archbishop's murder, 
turned away from the spot with a little increased re- 
spect for myself iox having really beheld it. But lively 
as was my delight in visiting Canterbury Cathedral, a 
still more abounding joy awaited me when on Dover 
beach I stood upon the very edge of the British Chan- 
nel (or more properly, the Strait of Dover), almost 
equal to that of standing on the brink of ocean itself; 
for Calais, the nearest spot on the French coast oppo- 
site, was visible only through a glass. Having gained 
some small knowledge of Shakespeare through En- 
field's Speaker and other leading books, I at once 
looked around for that portion of the cliffs of which 
Edgar says in King Lear — 

How fearful and dizzy 'tis to cast one's eye so low ! 

and the possibility of the samphire-gatherer pursuing 
his dangerous calling '* half-way down " seemed so 
extremely perilous as to be, in point of fact at least, 



122 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

questionable. The venerable old castle, towering upon 
the chalky summits, was an object of interest, but the 
crowning pleasure of all to me was the beach. Dur- 
ing the few days of our stay I never tired of looking 
for shells, stones and seaweed, and the *' fiv^e-fingers " 
and '' mariner's pincushion," which are constantly 
thrown up by the waves. Such rapturous delights 
had I in these little strolls, that to this day the smell 
of seaweed excites in me a sensation of peculiar pleas- 
ure. My grandmother, a sincerely devout member of 
the Church of England, made me a present of a 
Prayer Book, handsomely bound in scarlet morocco 
and gold, she having been one of the sponsors at my 
baptism in infancy, in St. James' Church, Westmin- 
ster ; and a beloved friend of my mother put into my 
hand a small collection of beautiful foreign shells, as 
an addendum to my own little gatherings. I have 
them yet, hers and mine ; they are things set apart in 
my eyes ; nor would I exchange them for the finest 
conchological specimens that money can purchase or 
taste select. 

This visit was a great epoch in my little life. Each 
scene of town or country through which we passed 
left behind its separate recollections and impressions. 
Even now a cloudless setting sun often recalls the 
evening I saw the sun set over the Thames at Graves- 
end while standing by my dear father's side ; a sudden 
shower frequently brings back the summer rain in 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I 23 

which we were caught while riding over Boughton 
Hill, and I rarely hear the word " bridge " but invol- 
untarily rise up before me the beautiful arches which 
span the Medway at Rochester. 

A few months after this my dear father, not finding 
business prosper according to his wishes, began to turn 
his thoughts to a residence nearer London. A small 
Gazeteer was put into my hand, and I was directed to 
make out from it an alphabetical list of all the towns 
ten miles and under from the metropolis. I went 
with sadness to my work. The mere employment 
was pleasant and easy enough, but the prospect of 
leaving the home with which every loved association 
of my brief life was intertwined was almost heart- 
breaking. Many a little sigh I heaved during the 
process of making out this list, which was to include 
my as yet unknown future dwelling-place. And finally 

the town of E , in the county of Middlesex, about 

seven miles from London, was fixed upon. My father, 
after visiting it and renting a house, came home with 
the announcement that we were to get ready and re- 
move immediately. In reply to my inquiry as to the 
appearance of the house we were to occupy, he told 
me it was white. "Oh! a white cottage !" I exclaimed, 
joyfully, having often been sorry that our house pre- 
sented only an exterior of dingy brick, and feeling as 
if to live in a ivJiite cottage might be some compensa- 
tion for the change impending. Great was my cha- 



124 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

grin when my dear father answered it could scarcely 
with propriety be termed a cottage, since it was part 
of the wing of a residence once occupied by the Earl 
of Essex, Queen Elizabeth's favorite, "whose history," 
said he, " you have so often read." 

Our little homestead was soon sold at a sacrifice to 
the first bidder ; the time came to bid it adieu, and 
then and there I took my first lesson in life's sorrows 
and partings. Oh ! that last look at our garden ! at 
the gooseberry bushes which were just bursting into 
leaf! at the orchard where buttercups and daisies were 
crimsoning and gilding the grass ; the lane, whose 
primroses were in full tufts ; the latticed window in 
my bedroom, through which I had so often gazed ** on 
the fast-fading hues of the west !" the parlor where 
my dear mother had so many times read to me from 
her favorite authors ; where she had sung to me " How 
sweet in the woodlands," and other little airs well re- 
membered ; the spot where I had sat to write my little 
books — to each, to all, at seven and a half years 
old, I bade adieu. We left our own home, and we 
never owned another ! 

Not the beautiful scenery of Epping Forest through 
which we passed on our way to E , nor the mag- 
nificent appearance of Wanstead House, then the resi- 
dence of Mr. W. W. P. Long, had power sufficient to 
charm me successfully. The first little beguilement 
from my sorrow arose from finding that our new gar- 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I 25 

den had some flowers I had rarely seen before. Poly- 
anthuses, wall-flowers, stock-gillyflowers, heartseases 
and violets, snowdrops and crocuses, lilacs and 
laburnums, were old familiar friends ; but the variously 
colored lupine, the rich clove pink, and the brilliant 

nasturtion were not in our garden at B . Our 

house at E was in reality much pleasanter than 

that we had left ; our garden nearly as extensive ; in 
fact it surrounded the house both before and behind, 
yet to me it never seemed half so pleasant, nor the 
walks around the neighborhood so delightful. The 
tragical fate of the mansion's ancient proprietor often 
haunted my mind ; and although I do not remember 
ever hearing or reading a ghost story of any kind in 
my childhood, and had passed thus far on my pilgrim- 
age perfectly free from any terror of the supernatural, 
yet I well recollect that an inexplicable fear and trem- 
bling frequently seized me in broad daylight, as I 
passed through what seemed to me the long passages 
to the rooms upstairs. I have never been able to 
account for or explain this, but so it was, and caused 
me much suffering. 

The pleasantest image imprinted on my mind in 
connection with E — — is an inn at the upper end of 
the town, adorned with a large painted sign of John 
Gilpin, hat and wig flying off, and horse running 
away ; having often read Cowper's amusing ballad, I 
used to pass this place with considerable interest. 



126 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

During our residence here a second attempt was made 
to send me to school, and again rehnquished for the 
same reason as before. My various Httle pursuits 
were continued as usual ; but though my parents 
formed some agreeable acquaintance, and visited more 

than we had done at B , I was not happy at E . 

An undertone of sadness had been awakened in my 
nature, and, strange as it may seem, so deeply did the 
departure from the first home that I remembered affect 
my whole being, that I have never, in a single in- 
stance, throughout subsequent life, looked forward to 
a new home with one pleasant anticipation. So that 

though not very happy at E , yet when at the end 

of a year's residence there my dear parent announced 
his intention of again making a change, I regretted it. 
He decided to remove to the suburban part of Lon- 
don, hoping such a locality might combine better 
facilities for business with a good measure of pure air 
and country advantages. 

Our next home was, therefore, on the south side of 
the Thames, within half an hour's walk of London 
Bridge, and a still shorter time would bring us out 
into the open country and green fields. The villages 
of Peckham and Deptford were within a ramble, and 
the Kent Road, with its ever-moving and ever-lively 
variety of travelers and carriages, was but a few rods 
from our door. Here^ alas ! we had no garden, though 
the whole row of houses of which ours was one had 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 12/ 

pleasant inclosures for flowers in front (such as in 
America are termed yards) — there were no grounds 
behind them. In the heart of the city we had rela- 
tives and friends whom we often visited, and thus I 
soon became familiar with the neighborhood of Corn- 
hill, Fleet Street, Temple Bar, the Strand, Bishops- 
gate Street and St. Paul's Cathedral ; and I was taken 
by my parents to see the tombs in Westminster Abbey, 
my father especially directing my attention to the 
Poets' Corner. Having read so much about kings 
and queens, I longed to see the interior of a palace 
and some of the trappings of royalty, but in vain, though 
I have yet in my possession the richly embroidered 
shoulder-knot of heavy sarcenet ribbon, now soiled and 
faded, which my maternal grandfather wore when, as 

Mayor of R , he went up to London to present a 

congratulatory address of some kind to King George 
Third, on which occasion he was proffered the honor 
of knighthood by his majesty, which, however, he 
declined. 

One family with whom we were intimate had the 
walls of their parlor adorned with a variety of paint- 
ings in oil and in water-colors. Among these was a 
large one in oil, having for its subject the choice of 
Hercules. I remember how I used to stand before 
this picture studying the two faces to whose influences 
the eyes of the young hero seemed alternately to sur- 
render themselves, but being familiar with the story 



128 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

had no anxiety as to his decision. On the opposite 
side of the room hung a small landscape of such quiet 
and rural beauty, that I used to think the possession 
of it would almost be a compensation for not being a 
dweller in the spot itself 

Among the poets my father's especial favorites were 
Thomson in his " Seasons," and Akenside in his 
" Pleasures of Imagination." And I have often won- 
dered why the last-mentioned poem seems now to be 
so little read, so little praised or prized among people 
of culture. Can the elevated gratifications arising 
from a refined taste be more grandly delineated than in 
the closing pages of Book Third ? If Hannah More 
in her "Calebs " could justly lament the growing in- 
difference with which this fine poem was even then 
regarded, the observation is still more appropriate at 
the present day. To the various glowing pictures of 
nature in all her changing forms presented in Thom- 
son's " Seasons," my dear father early drew my atten- 
tion, and in particular to the sublime devotion which 
pervades the noble " Hymn " at the close of " Winter." 
And although not identified with those who are termed 
Universalists, he delighted to dwell with a kind of 
consolatory trust on these lines : 

The Great Shepherd reigns, 
And His unstiffering kingdom yet will come. 

Pope's Essa)^ on Man, his Universal Prayer, Gray's 
Elegy, Cowper's Poems, Goldsmith's Deserted Village, 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I 29 

Spenser's Schoolmistress, Beattie's Minstrel and his 
Hermit, with two or three of Shakespeare's Plays, 
were early in my hands. Milton and Young, of course, 
were on our bookshelves, but no suggestion was made 
to me about reading them till I was some years older. 
Lord Byron my dear father would not (as would 
have seemed to him) have misused time in reading : 
not from the least narrowness or bigotry, but he rev- 
erenced moral and religious purity above all things, 
and never voluntarily threw his mind in the way of 
any associations which might by the merest possibility 
tarnish that purity, or have the faintest tendency to 
weaken love and reverence to God in his own soul. 
So that Byron never came in my way till, when about 
twelve, an acquaintance lent me Childe Harold. I 
never in my life borrowed or read a single book un- 
known to my parents ; and when I showed them this 
they neither recommended nor discouraged its peru- 
sal, though they spoke of the writer's character with 
disapprobation. However, the utter absence of the 
devotional or moral element in Byron's writings pre- 
vented their possessing any fascination for me, with 
all of whose intellectual associations, even at the earli- 
est age, religious feelings were inseparably interwoven. 
By a recollection of my own experiences I can 
judge of the many difficulties children often have in 
getting clear apprehensions of some parts of their 
reading. 



130 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

" The cottage curs at early pilgrim bark " is a line 
occurring in a beautiful verse of Beattie's Minstrel. 
Now it so happened that at eight years old I had 
never, before reading this verse, heard the word 
" cur," and supposing it to be a verb of which " cot- 
tage " was the subject, wondered much why and 
in what manner the cottage '' airred'' at the early 
pilgrim, and still more what the last word, "bark," 
could possibly have to do with the preceding words, 
supposing, as I did, the sentence to be complete 
without it. In Pope's Homer the magnificent descrip- 
tion of moonlight, which I found in one of my read- 
ing books, ends with this couplet : 

The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight, 
Eye the blue vault, and bless the useful light. 

The nature and character of a " swain " were matters 
of some speculation with me. I perceived that a 
" swain " meant a man of some kind, but what he was 
supposed to.be particularly " conscious " of, I knew 
not; however, since he was described as " eyeing the 
blue vault," I imagined him to be a very contemplative 
person, or perhaps an astronomer. Pope's Ode on 
Solitude, which among scores of other poems I early 
committed to memory, greatly interested me, but 
"steal from the world," in the last stanza, was an 
utter puzzle to a child of eight years old ; what he in- 
tended to " steal from the world," or how he could 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I3I 

enjoy the ''innocence^' spoken of in the preceding 
verse and yet " steal,'' was beyond my comprehension, 
and it was some time before my silent queries ended 
in a perception of the poet's true meaning, for my 
parents, though ever ready to give me all needful in- 
formation, preferred (and so did I) that I should search 
out for myself all I could alone. In those dear de- 
lightful little volumes, " Original Poems," nearly all of 
which I learned by heart, a sweet little piece " To a 
Butterfly " thus opens : 

Poor harmless insect, thither fly. 

Of course, the first clause was perfectly intelligible,, 
but what " thither fly " could mean was a mystery ; I 
supposed, however, that ** fly " was probably a con- 
traction of " butterfly," and that "thither" was used 
to denote some trait belonging to it. In reading 
Goldsmith's " Rome," the story of the phantom appear- 
ing to Brutus in his tent, and saying, " Thou shalt 
meet me again at Philippi," seized powerfully on my 
imagination. Vainly I looked forward page after 
page, again and again, and read and re-read every 
word connected with Philippi, expecting to find the 
return of the unearthly visitor. My mind was then 
too unfamiliar with such narratives to connect with 
the appearance of the phantom and its promise the 
subsequent fact, that it was at Philippi, in battle, Bru- 
tus met his death. 



132 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

My father and mother were extremely careful to in- 
culcate exact accuracy of narration upon us in repeat- 
ing anything we had seen, heard or read, and one 
particular lesson of this kind left an indelible impres- 
sion upon me. We were accustomed at the tea table 
to give our parents some account of our reading or 
other employments during the day. I had been read- 
ing in Mrs. Priscilla Wakefield's " Mental Improve- 
ment " a narrative of the chocolate tree ; and here I 
gratefully mention how very many elements of gen- 
eral knowledge I owe to this lady's admirable books 
for children, almost all of which were in our juvenile 
library. "Papa," said I, ** a whole crop of chocolate 
trees has been known to perish in a single night with- 
out any cause." " That is impossible, my dear," 
quietly replied my father. " Indeed, papa, the book 
says so." " There must be some mistake on your 
part," responded he. Mentally reviewing the sentence, 
I added, " It says, have been known to perish with- 
out Tiny visible cause." "Ah! that alters the case," 
replied my father ; and this incident stamped on my 
mind the importance of precise accuracy in verbal 
repetition, and the fact that, as my dear father took the 
opportunity to tell me, every effect must have some 
cause, either known or unknown. 

Two or three years later I received another lesson 
equally valuable of a similar kind. Staying a (qw 
days with some valued friends of my parents, the char- 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I 33 

acter of Dr. Watts happened to become one morning 
at breakfast the topic of conversation ; and reference 
being made to his diminutive stature, I ventured to 
observe : *' I have heard papa say that when he heard 
Dr. Watts preach he stood on a small stool in the 
pulpit, in order to be better seen by the congregation." 
*' Your papa," observed one of the ladies, " must be a 
very old man, indeed." '* Why, no," I replied, dimly 
apprehending I was making some mistake, yet unable 
to conjecture its character; " Papa is not an old man 
at all, yet." " He must be," was her reply, " to re- 
member Dr. Watts !" The truth was, that my be- 
loved parent, who deeply venerated that great and 
good man, had talked to me so often about passages 
in his history, that I had supposed him to speak from 
J^ersoua/ rccoWtction instead oi reading ; and thus, with- 
out the faintest attempt to deceive, I made my father 
the contemporary of one who died long before he was 
born; so I learned, not without some sensible mortifica- 
tion, the essential importance of correct dates in all 
narrations. 

The Rev. R. A on one occasion preached at the 

place of worship we generally attended after removing 
to London. I remembered his having visited us when 

we lived at B-^ , and there taking some little kindly 

notice of me. Therefore I begged my father to let me 

accompany him when he went to speak to Mr. A in 

the vestry, whither it was customary for the minister 



134 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

to retire at the close of the service, to receive the 
physical refreshment of a glass of wine (surely the 
present day is an improvement on its predecessors !) 
and the mental exhilaration of a few compliments on 
his performance. While my father and he were ex- 
changing salutations, I silently raised my eyes to the 

amiable countenance and gold spectacles of Mr. A , 

who gratified me beyond measure by saying in a very 
kind and gentle voice and with a benevolent smile, 

'' Is this the little maid whom I left at B ?" " Little 

maid " left a very pleasing impression on my mind, as 
the epithet was there associated with the history of a 
certain other "little maid," of whom I had read in the 
Bible, at whose suggestion Naaman resorted to the 
prophet Elisha for the healing of his leprosy. How 
we may sometimes gladden the heart of a sensitive 

child by a cheering recognition ! Perhaps Mr. A 

little thought how it gladdened mine to be remem- 
bered by him for two whole years ! 

Among the duties my dear parents most constantly 
inculcated on their children none was more earnestly 
enjoined upon us than that of habitual kindness and 
tenderness toward the poor, and toward all dumb 
creatures. My father had copied in large letters on a 
card and attached to the wall of our sitting-room a 
couplet which reads thus : 

Take not away that life you cannot give ; 
For all things have an equal right to live. 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. I 35 

These teachings sank deep into my infant heart, nor 
can I ever remember the time when my Httle feet 
would wiUingly have crushed a worm. No " Societies 
for the Pevention of Cruelty to Animals " (blessed be 
their labors !) were then in existence; but were it pos- 
sible for all children to be trained as we were, none 
would be needed. 

When I was nearly eight years old, one cold winter 
morning, during our hour of family worship, my atten- 
tion was arrested by the mewing of my favorite cat on 
the outside of the window-sill. She was soliciting shel- 
ter from the storm and admission into the warm parlor. 
The rest of my dear father's prayer gained but little 
of my attention, and I could scarcely remain kneeling 
until the " Amen," but when that welcome word had 
been uttered I sprang instantly to the window. In 
my hurry to open it my fingers slipped, and hand and 
arm went crashing through the pane. A piece of 
flesh was chipped by the broken glass entirely out of 
my wrist; surgical assistance was called; my hand was 
dressed, and remained in a sling for some time. While 
I acknowledge too great precipitation in my little deed 
of kindness, yet I look upon the scar which it left, and 
which I shall carry to my grave, with a feeling rather 
akin to pleasure than regret. It is one of the inefface- 
able records of my happy childhood, and at least not 
a disgraceful one. 

When I was about a year older, my dear father, on 



136 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

the birthday of one of my brothers, gave us each a 
trifle of money to spend as we pleased. In doing so 
he told us that a poor Irishman whom he occasionally 
employed, and whom we had often seen, had a day or 
two before been thrown into prison for a small debt, and 
suggested to us whether we would not like to put our 
little moneys together and appropriate them to pay 
the sum for which he was kept from his family. We 
gladly said yes ; so we all proceeded to the prison 
where the man was held in durance ; and my father^ 
having gained admittance to the jailer, paid poor 
Donovan's little debt. The object of our sympathy 
manifested his gratitude with such thanks and tears as 
gave us much more happiness in the little sacrifice we 
had made for him than we could have enjoyed, had 
we laid out our dear father's gift upon any personal 
indulgence. 

While yet a child I cherished an intense desire that 
I might some time become acquainted with the Greek 
and Hebrew languages in order to read the Holy 
Scriptures in the very words through which they were 
originally transmitted to us, and thus be able, as I sup- 
posed, to gain a more exact and perfect understanding 
of their meaning. But as I grew older I found that, 
among men acknowledged to be of equal erudition as 
Biblical scholars, there existed wide diversities of 
opinion on theological points ; that various differences 
of interpretation divided and distracted them, and that 



PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 13/ 

they differed just as much among themselves about 
the sense of the text as those who could only read 
their English Bible. I perceived, therefore, that a 
knowledge of the original languages presented no 
means of settling points of theology, while, however, 
the holy and divine teachings of our Saviour in regard 
to the conduct of the heart and life seemed to speak 
in clear and intelligible tones a language undisputed 
by any, whether through the Greek or English tongue. 
Thus I came to the conclusion that an acquaintance 
with the dead languages, however gratifying, was of 
no importance to my progress in true religion; and 
happy and thankful to have reached this point, I re- 
solved to content myself with the study of the Bible 
in my mother tongue. 

At fourteen I read with close attention Dr. Blair's 
'* Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres," and Profes- 
sor Dugald Stewart's "Philosophy of the Human Mind." 
The former I indeed began to study more than a year 
earlier, and carefully went over it again and again 
until many pages were transferred to my memory ; 
and from this work, and some volumes of the Ana- 
lytical and Monthly Reviews in my father's posses- 
sion, as well as from Johnson's ** Lives of the Poets," I 
learned a little respecting practical criticism on books 
and literature. No work perhaps ever interested me 
more deeply than Stewart's "Philosophy." Many pages 
of extracts I made from it, and it helped me in the 



138 PERSONAL RECOLLECTIONS. 

systematic culture of understanding and memory more 
than any other book I ever read. One remark of the 
author especially arrested my attention. It was this : 
*' Memory, unless it be carefully cultivated by con- 
stant exercise, gradually decays as we advance to ina- 
tiirityr This was a timely watchword to me. I re- 
solved that mine (which I was often told was naturally 
good) should not decay by being neglected. From 
that period I systematically and daily cultivated the 
retentive powers, which from infancy also my parents 
had encouraged me to exercise, and the high delight 
and enjoyment I have throughout life received from a 
memory somewhat enriched by culture still continues 
to be ever new and unceasing. Though quite unequal 
in its stores to what I could desire and aspire after, 
yet judging from the very small possessions of value 
most persons seem to have laid up in theirs, perhaps 
it is a little better furnished than that of many. How- 
ever, such as it is, it has been no mere birthright ; its 
little acquisitions are the result and reward of earnest, 
persevering, unwearied labor, which commenced in 
childhood, and which is still prosecuted with undi- 
minished pleasure. 

When I was between ten and eleven years of age 
my parents emigrated to the United States, their chil- 
dren, of course, accompanying them ; and here I close 
the little reminiscences of my early childhood and my 
native country. 



WORKING FOR JESUS. 



Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters. — Isaiah xxxii 20. 

TT 7HAT is working for Jesus?" It is simply 
V V striving to promote His religion by the 
constant endeavor to bring that religion into every- 
day practice through lives of Christian love and use- 
fulness. It is not the readiness with which we ta/k 
about Jesus that is the true test of attachment to Him, 
but the manifestation in o?ir spirit of the spirit and 
principles He inculcated, in the government of our 
daily doings, our social habits, our business and our 
pleasures. And whatever is done out of a pure pur- 
pose for the temporal or spiritual welfare of others is 
work for Him. 

Whenever you are conscientiously studying in the 
httle things of life to " please every one his neighbor 
for his good, to be kind and tender-hearted, to support 
the weak and be patient toward all men," fou are 
working for Jesus. 

Whenever you are permitted to help a struggling 
fellow-pilgrim on his way, or to raise up a drooping 
spirit from despondency by tenderly reminding it of 

(139) 



140 WORKING FOR JESUS. 

the love and care of an ever-present Friend ; when- 
ever you let fall a word of loving counsel to one who 
may chance to need it, and out of a full heart gently 
touch some chord which may vibrate to that touch 
(not in the tone of a Pharisee, but a brother), you are 
zv or king for Jesus. 

When in the dreary depth of winter you search out 
a comfortless dwelling, bearing with you some small 
gift, and by proffering the soothing word, the sympa- 
thetic inquiry, lighten the weary bosom of half its bur- 
den, j/^// are working for Jesus. 

When you enter the chamber where lies sick and 
helpless the child of poverty, and, caring first for his 
earthly necessities, speak to him of such cheering 
thoughts as may aid him to cast his care on God, lift- 
ing up by the lonely bedside a few words of fervent 
petition, not because it is expected of you to make a 
prayer, but because your own soul freely prompts the 
words of suppliance which rise to your lips, yo2i are 
working for Jesus. 

Are you a mother? and, with a mother's love and a 
deep reliance on the Great Helper, are you seeking to 
guard your precious little ones from all that would 
contaminate their minds and indispose their hearts to 
receive heavenly visitations ? In the cool and calm 
of the day do you try to lead their thoughts upward, 
teaching them by precept and example the love and 
practice of such virtues as our Divine Lord Himself 
pronounced blessed? — you are working for Jesus. 



WORKING FOR JESUS. I4I 

Are you a teacher ? and, amid lessons and studies 
multiform, are you sedulously solicitous, by the spirit 
and temper you carry into your instructions, to show 
your pupils that " all the treasures of the earth are not 
to be compared to the least virtue of the soul ?" that 
uprightness, truth and purity are of infinitely higher 
value than all merely intellectual attainments or worldly 
distinctions ; you, too, are zvorking for Jesus, even 
though you should seldom bring into your teachings 
a direct mention of His hallowed name. 

Every time you utter words of truth and righteous- 
ness in the social circle, and dare to maintain your 
Christian integrity and the simplicity of Christ, with- 
out reference to popular opinion, you are working for 
Jesus. 

Every time you forego your own self-indulgence or 
indolence for the sake of ministering to others either 
in body or in soul ; every time you try to strengthen 
in any heart a right purpose, and to show forth the 
religion you profess by unworldliness in you own life, 
you are working for Jesus. 

But you must be well content to be " prized and 
loved by God alone ^ for your aims and purposes will 
so permeate your whole being that they who look not 
beyond the surface will be likely never to understand 
them at all. Those " busy bustlers " who imagine 
that "work for Jesus" can only be done by having 
perpetually on their lips His holy Nam.e, anywhere 



142 WORKING FOR JESUS. 

and everywhere, in season and out of season, will 
probably not recognize such quiet, constant, unobtru- 
sive labor as of any value. Nevertheless, what is that 
to you ? It is not for them you are working, but for 
God. 

Ah ! how many modest toilers in the small sphere 
of home, how many a life-long invalid on the couch of 
pain, will hereafter be recognized by their Lord as 
having been true workers for Him, while many who 
held themselves and were held by others in high 
esteem as such may haply pass unacknowledged ! 
Work on, therefore, ye who, year after year, are 
striving to do something, though it be ever so little, 
in His Name. You need not blazon abroad your 
happy little experiences, for you are asking no earthly 
suffrage. But how inexpressibly animating is the 
thought that in whatever efforts you put forth for the 
diminishing of sin and misery, and the increase of 
happiness, virtue and piety, in this poor world, you are 
not only working for Jesus, but witJi Him ! "With 
Him, whose life below was love continually, you are 
humbly, joyfully co-operating in your little measure 
to advance on earth the Kingdom of Heaven ! 

Then, seeing we have companionship so divine and 
help so infinite, let each day bear up afresh from our 
souls the fervent aspiration, " Lord ! what wilt Thou 
have 7fie to do ?" 

And although the handfuls which here and there 



WORKING FOR JESUS. 



43 



we glean for the heavenly Husbandman be few and 
small in comparison with what we desire, and although 
some days we may fear we have scarcely been able to 
bring even " two mites " into the treasury, yet let us 
not faint or falter, but be encouraged to go onward, 
nothing doubting but that the great Lord of the har- 
vest will, in His abounding love and mercy, " accept 
our sheaves." 




DETACHED THOUGHTS 



FROM MY 



DAILY JOURNALS. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS FROM MY DAILY 
JOURNALS. 



I AM so much happier, as I think, for not being one 
bit of a sectarian. Among the things in my life 
for which I am most thankful is, that I have known 
many good and excellent people in all Christian de- 
nominations, and that though I have seen, alas ! sojne 
bigots and formalists in all, I have likewise met equal 
piety and goodness in every one of our Christian 
churches. I am convinced, from long-continued ob- 
servation, that no one set of opinions whatever neces- 
sarily either produces or precludes true religious attain- 
ment in heart and life. I read continually the holy 
aspirations and devout utterances of good and pious 
men and women, without one particle of care as to 
which little inclosure of the Great Shepherd's fold 
their names belong. And frequently I have asked 
myself, will He who created us all, and who accepts all 
that sincerely serve Him and strive to be approved of 
Him, will He welcome any one to heaven more speci- 
ally because while on earth he was a devoted Metho- 
dist, Baptist, Episcopalian or Presbyterian ? Surely 

(H7) 



148 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

not. Yet many within the pale of every Church ap- 
pear to think an absorbing dedication of themselves 
to the interests of that particular Church, and a con- 
tinual struggle to draw people into it, is the very 
surest way of having a bright crown awaiting them in 
heaven. But it is not the number of individuals we 
gather into any visible Church, but the number we 
may have been enabled to influence to live according 
to the spirit of Christ that will be to us a crown of 
rejoicing hereafter. 

Perhaps there is no mode of worship so ceremo- 
nial but that through it some devout hearts have been 
able to approach God spiritually, nor any so devoid of 
form but that it may be adopted by an undevout 
heart without any spiritual meaning. A mind natur- 
ally of a devotional cast will, if sincerely religious, be 
devout, whatever mode of worship it may practice, 
while one not devotional in its tendencies will seldom 
become so under any administration of religious 
services whatever. Doubtless there is many a Roman 
Catholic who, though encumbered with a multiplicity 
of ritual observances, looks beyond externals, and 
even in and through them offers acceptable worship to 
the Searcher of Hearts ; while it is possible for even a 
Friend or Quaker, the very essence of whose faith is 
spirituality, to become a formalist, going to and com- 
ing [from his silent worship with lifeless regularity. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 149 

The only certain safeguard against formalism in relig- 
ion, in or under any mode of worship, is true spiritu- 
ality of heart. 

Indifference to public opinion on grounds of prin- 
ciple is quite another thing from insensibility to the 
value of just esteem. 

Every work, every action, that truly blesses man- 
kind tends directly or indirectly to honor God. 

* 

I HAVE long been convinced that God's promised 
Spirit does not instruct us so much in forming theo- 
logical definitions as in breathing spiritual and holy 
influences on our souls. My reason for arriving at 
this conclusion is, that superior minds of equal intelli- 
gence, who have sought truth with the same integrity 
of purpose and the same earnestness of research, 
arrive, in their theological investigations, at widely dif- 
ferent conclusions, while the spirit of holy and devo- 
tional aspiration is the same among all the truly good 
under every varied shade of creed and belief. 

The reason why time seems to fly faster as we ad- 
vance in life is, that having traversed larger tracts of 
existence, its separate portions appear short compared 
with the whole ground over which we have passed. 



150 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

Happily it is not necessary to know one's ABC 
to get to heaven, but for all that it is a very great 
blessing to know one's ABC. 

From the records of biography and from personal 
observation, I cannot but come to the deliberate con- 
clusion that there are human souls sincerely and 
devoutly feeling after Truth and God who never have 
been able to accept the creed of any particular church, 
and who yet are in reality much nearer to their 
Creator than multitudes who, without any investiga- 
tion, blindly give in a profession of unqualified alle- 
giance to some formulary of faith. 

* * 
In our prayers, verbal utterances are not needed by 
Him who can read the language of a sigh or a tear ; 
but there are times when for me words are necessary, 
not to inform God of my wants, but to render those 
wants more clearly definite to myself The necessi- 
ties and aspirations of each day are frequently made 
much more plain to my own mind when clothed in 
language, and the expression of our wants or of our 
thanks deepens our sense of them. There are times 
when if I do not clothe my petitions in words they 
are apt to slide into a species of unprofitable reverie, 
which neither strengthens nor comforts the soul, nor 
fits it for its duties and trials. The use of words often 
shows me exactly what I pray for, and sometimes 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. I5I 

gives distinctness to aspirations which otherwise would 
be vague and dim to my own mind. 

It is a curious thing that perfect humility and inor- 
dinate self-esteem, two qualities diametrically opposite 
to each other, sometimes produce precisely the same re- 
sult in one particular, that of putting their possessor 
entirely at ease in any and every situation. 

How desirable and delightful is the faculty by 
which allusions readily and rapidly come up before 
the mind suggested by natural objects, and by which 
almost everything brings to mind some line or thought 

from the heart's own best beloved poets ! 

* 

There must be a corner-stone for every edifice to 
rest upon, but a corner-stone alo7te will not make any 
building complete. 

The bestowment of affection is not altogether vol- 
untary, and although we may cultivate or check its 
growth, we cannot, either by any effort of will or idea 
of duty, create it where it does not exist, or annihilate 
it where it does. 

I HAVE heard a certain class of ministers sometimes 
speak of all those nations who lived anterior to the 
Christian era (the Jews alone excepted) as but little 



152 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

above the brute world in their religious and moral 
perceptions, and am often led to wonder whether such 
misstatements proceed from utter ignorance or from 
willful misrepresentation. Are those who make them 
so recklessly wholly unacquainted with the utterances, 
often noble and elevating, of Socrates, Plato, Confu- 
cius, Seneca and Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ? Un- 
speakably to be valued is the gift of the Christian 
religion ; but I never could see that we magnify its 
blessed influences by denying the action of God's Spirit 
upon the minds and hearts of some who existed be- 
fore the advent of our Saviour upon earth. 

The necessity of earning daily bread by daily labor 
is a blessing to the uncultivated classes, provided that 
labor be not excessive. 

* * 
I PERCEIVE that the dispositions of mind most 
habitual to me in my waking hours follow me into my 
dreams. If in the latter I witness any acts of unkind- 
ness or cruelty, I am just as much disturbed by them 
as I should be were I awake ; my ivill to help or com- 
fort any one in affliction, or to do a little good if I can 
to any one, is exactly the same, dreaming or waking. 
Thence I draw the conclusion that our will is a thing 
always our own, and that it is in our power to form 
its character. I have, unhappily and strangely, been 
sometimes obliged to witness in my dreams cruel and 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 153 

wicked actions, but so far from ever having been in 
any way a party to them, they have always filled me 
with intensest abhorrence. 

The enjoyments which result from the exercise of 
religious aspirations and benevolent affections are un- 
affected by the surroundings of our lot as regards 
refined society or beautiful scenery. But those pleas- 
ures that spring from ideality, from delightful combi- 
nations of thought suggested by natural objects, are 
certainly greatly influenced, and indeed are, in some 
measure, created by and dependent on outward asso- 
ciations. 

The truly good of every name are equally dear ta 
me, for I have received spiritual treasures and benefits 
from some in all. 

•X- * 

Some very worthy people make the mistake (not 
the less a mistake because their intentions are good) 
of seeming to like and praise everybody ; at the same 
time they withhold a word of disapproval in regard to 
many things glaringly wrong, under an idea that they 
are thus manifesting Christian charity. But it is not 
the office of that beautiful virtue to annihilate the 
power of correct perception as to good and evil. I 
am not quite sure whether the commendation I have 
heard bestowed on certain persons in these words. 



154 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

" they never speak against anybody," be in reality as 
high a praise as is frequently imagined. Those who 
speak with nearly equal complacency of almost all 
people must lack either discrimination or truthfulness^ 
must either be negative characters or to some extent 
dissemblers. We should try to recognize all the good 
that actually exists in whomsoever we see it, but to 
praise indiscriminately is often only a cheap and easy 

way of obtaining popularity. 

* 

Some fight to establish Christian truth (Cortes, for 
instance) in just the same spirit a Mussulman might 
evince in propagating Mohammedanism, simply be- 
cause it is their faith, and therefore they want to estab- 
lish it : not that they care one iota that the holy 
principles for which Jesus lived and died should gain 
an influence on the w^orld. 

Although no home can be complete that does not 
hold some human object of affection for. us to love, 
yet where this happiness is denied there may be many 
merciful compensations in the cultivation of intellect- 
ual pursuits and the exercise of benevolent affections. 

*'* 

How infinitely happier is that individual, no matter 

what is his form of faith, who fully believes and trusts 

in an Almighty and Heavenly Father, than the most 

intelligent Pantheist can possibly be ! — he who sees 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 155 

no conscious power above himself ruling in the con- 
cerns of this world, nothing beyond a stern and regular 
system of causes and consequences, '* a stony Sphynx," 
incapable of understanding one cry of the suffering 
heart or of responding to one petition of an imploring 
and helpless creature ! 

We see in our dreams distinctly multitudes of 
objects and individuals as plainly as when we are 
awake. Does not this prove that the sejise of sight 
acts independently of the eye, although in our waking 
hours the eye is the sole medium through which sight 
is exercised ? 

True religion is not the growth of excitement and 
agitation, but of thoughtfulness and prayer. 

We cannot accurately judge of the spiritual rela- 
tions of another soul toward its Maker as to its ac- 
ceptance with Him, but we may form some conjecture 
respecting them by their results on the life. We can 
see, and very easily too, whether an individual prac- 
tices that justice and mercy toward others which the 
religion of Christ requires and which a heart right 
with God will bring forth. But the mere assertion of 
any one as to his religious state weighs less and less 
with me, since I have frequently heard the most posi- 
tive confidence expressed of Divine favor and accept- 



156 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

ance by persons in whose lives existed so very little 
moral uprightness, that I should never have imagined 
they laid any claim to the Christian name but from 
their public declaration of it. 

I THINK I have sometimes found that little prayers 
for little things, offered in humility, sincerity and faith 
in the goodness of God, are not put up in vain. 

One feels sometimes interested in intellectual per- 
sons simply as intellectual companions ; one can also 
be interested in others who are not at all intellectual 
if they are good and high-principled. But where you 
perceive neither the moral nor the intellectual charac- 
teristics, how irksome, how utterly profitless it is vol- 
untarily to throw yourself among those from whom 
you cannot receive and to whom you find you cannot 
impart aught that is useful or valuable ! 

I DO not think it right to suppose extemporaneous 

preaching the only kind which is influenced and aided 

by the Holy Spirit. God can surely guide the pen as 

it moves in the closet just as truly and entirely as the 

voice which speaks impromptu in the public assembly. 

* 

It is said that the study of Nature cannot fail to 
raise the mind to Nature's God. Yet it is likewise 
true that minds long and closely drilled in the exact 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 157 

sciences, wherein assertions and discoveries are sus- 
ceptible of /r^^ amounting almost to demonstration, 
are in consequence of this mental habitude sometimes 
peculiarly incapable of receiving abstract truths, such, 
for instance, as relate to the existence of God and the 
immortality of the soul. As these can never be made 
the subjects of tangible verification, they must, if re- 
ceived by the mind, be so through quite a different 
kind of evidence, viz., that which is purely spiritual. 

How few are capable of that courage which can 
form and express opinions differing from the majority 
of those around them ! 

In the minds of some religious professors there 
seems to exist a strange and morbid fear of good 
works. Alas ! good works are not so over-abounding 
in this world that any one need be cautioned against 
a superfluity of them. 

If we desire to conquer a besetting infirmity or to 
increase in a particular virtue, we must not suppose 
that simply asking God to remove the one or to bestow 
the other is fulfilling the measure of our duty. To 
earnest prayer must be added effort, conflict, continued 
and persistent. We must wrestle as well as pray, 
must fight as well as trust. One of the modern falla- 
cies in religion is the assertion that we have nothing 



158 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

to do but to take it for granted God will do all for us 
if we ask Him, without our having any further trouble 
about the matter. This is neither the teaching of com- 
mon sense nor of Scripture. 

One of the most painful results of a long experience 
of life is that inevitable diminution of trusting confi- 
dence in human beings which, without becoming at 
all misanthropic, the progress of time necessarily to 
some extent produces in us. When we first enter 
upon life, if upright ourselves, we are disposed to be- 
lieve every one else so ; we receive every kindness as 
genuine, every pleasant word as sincere, every promise 
as binding, and we should think it really wrong to 
question in the slightest degree the integrity of any 
one where appearances were fair. But the lapse of 
years compels us, even against our will, to unlearn 
our faith; and though we perhaps gain a more earnest 
confidence in the trustworthy y^ze/, we are obliged to 
lose general reliance on the many. 

The little virtues, as they are called, are great bless- 
ings to those who live with us. 

* * 

I THINK I am acquainted with a few Christian pro- 
fessors whose religion seems principally to consist in 
an unshaken and unshakable conviction that their 
own salvation is achieved, and as decided a conviction 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 159 

that those of their neighbors and friends who are not 
members of some particular church are, no matter how- 
excellent their character, the ** unsaved " and ** uncon- 
verted." Indeed they are accustomed openly to speak 
of the latter by these epithets. Now, are not the as- 
sumptions of such somewhat akin to those of the 
Pharisees in the time of our Saviour? 

We must sedulously cultivate devotional affections 
and holy aspirations if we would have them ever pres- 
ent with us, and would experience the blessed happi- 
ness they impart to the soul. Without such cultiva- 
tion they will no more live and grow within us than 
the rarest plants and flowers will flourish without 
nurture and culture. We must daily and hourly 
cherish these divinely precious sources of happiness, 
or they will never spring up and abide in our hearts 
a fountain of living joy. 

* * 
My hope of heaven rests on the promised mercy 
and forgiveness of my Heavenly Father toward all 
who, trusting in the salvation offered by Jesus Christ 
our Lord and truly penitent for all their sins, are 
humbly and sincerely endeavoring by His holy help 
to live daily according to His will, with full purpose 
of heart and soul. 

* * 
How much more valuable is homely kindness than 
polished selfishness ! 



l6o DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

It is not possible for us to produce cheerfulness, or 
to force ourselves into feeling it, by any simple effort 
of the zvill, although we may cultivate, and ought to 
cultivate, the disposition to do so by calling up to 
our minds the many blessings and sources of happi- 
ness we enjoy, and although the understanding may 
fully recognize the reasons why cheerfulness should 
exist. But actually to experience the emotion of glad- 
ness in the contemplation of these is sometimes wholly 
beyond our power. Does not this go to prove that 
every mental sensation is greatly dependent on certain 
psychological conditions of the brain, which conditions 
we are unable at our own will or pleasure to create ? 

* * 

It is best to arise from too saddening memories of 
the past, to look forward and upward, and endeavor 
to seek and find happiness by making our lives useful 
to others. 

* 

There is a vast difference between changing our 
opinion on any subject through fickleness, and because 
in doing so we have considered it anew, and have 
found reason for revoking our first judgment. 

* 

* * 

How deeply mournful a thing it is that intense re- 
ligious zeal frequently exists where there is little 
moral uprightness. 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. l6l 

We should remember the measure of our own con- 
viction is not always the measure of positive truth. 

The endeavor to relieve want, or to do kindly offices 
toward the ignorant and suffering, is, under the actual 
state of this world, one of the very purest satisfactions 
we can possibly enjoy. Yet I think it is in itself not 
quite the highest, since it necessarily presupposes the 
existence of evil and misery; whereas the communion 
of thought, feeling and aspiration, which exists in in- 
tellectual reciprocity between pure minds, may pertain 
not only to the most perfect state of life below, but 
we can imagine may even form one of the blisses of 
heaven above. 

Were there no suffering to alleviate, no vice to re- 
form, no ignorance to instruct, mental intercourse with 
superior minds and hearts would, perhaps, be the most 
perfect enjoyment of which we can conceive ; but as 
the world exists at present, the exercise of practical 
benevolence is probably the most exquisite happiness 
to be realized on earth. 

Fully do I believe in seeking and receiving Divine 
guidance in all our worldly concerns, yet I believe 
that few even of the truest Christians live always in so 
clear a vision as not to be sometimes liable to mistakes 
as to its promptings. There is a wide difference be- 



l62 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

tween sincerely and habitually asking the direction of 
God's Spirit, and arrogantly claiming to act constantly 
under its influences. 

That " confession of Christ " before men which 
consists simply in joining a church is quite popular, 
and is indeed rather an added passport to respecta- 
bility ; but that which lies in a life regulated by the 
precepts of our Saviour, in controlling the words and 
actions, in living with simplicity and moderation as to 
our worldly expenses, superfluities and decorations, is 
not generally popular, though it is a task infinitely 
harder than giving in your name to some particular 

church. 

* 

When we once are assured we are right we have 
only to go forward in simple faith and trust, but before 
we can safely do this we must endeavor to attain a 
true and just judgment as to what right is. We must 
not only be faithful to conscience, but must see whether 
we have sought to have conscience itself properly en- 
lightened and directed. 

I MUST not expect the excellences of one friend in 
another, but rejoice in the individual merits of each. 

There is, I think, but one kind of real Christianity — 
that which leads us into a daily endeavor to be con- 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 163 

formed to the Divine Will in our thoughts, words and 
actions. It exists in very different degrees in different 
individuals, but some portion of it viiist dwell in the 
character of every true disciple of Christ, and without 
this all mere church-membership is nothing more than 
an empty name. 

The whole current of our lives sets in a direction 
exactly opposite to that of spirituality, and it is only 
by continual watchfulness and conflict that in a world 

like this spirituality can possibly be maintained. 

* 
* * 

To THINK that because a man undertakes the office 
of religious teacher what he says must necessarily be 
instructive, is a foolish as well as fearful mistake. Yet 
not a few well-meaning people talk as if to uphold 
everything said and done by ministers was upholding 
the Christian religion itself! Any one with an ordi- 
nary share of natural ability can stand up in a pulpit 
and expound the creed of a Church, but it is those 
ministers only who have true personal experience in 
the Christian life that can speak of that life to the in- 
struction and consolation of others. 

Thanks be to all who with words of appreciation 
and cheer recognize the struggles and aspirations of 
our minds, and thus help us onward in Life's great 
battle. Encouraging utterances from such come as a 



164 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

refreshing cordial to the heart, surrounded as we are 
by the many who cannot forgive you for rising above 
the dead level in which they themselves willingly 
abide, and with whom your best and noblest aspirings 
are just so many reasons why they should not and do 
not like you. 

How greatly the practice of memorizing anything 
opens one's perceptions to all the lesser and minuter 
beauties contained in it, whether it be Scripture or lite- 
rary production of any kind ! 

* * 
Life changes much less for those whose pleasures 
and pursuits have always been of the intellectual char- 
acter than for those whose youth has glided away in 
a succession of frivolities and follies. What have the 
latter class of individuals to enjoy at sixty years of 
age ? Their resources have vanished with their youth. 

How difficult I have sometimes found it to unite at 
all times Christian kindness with Christian sincerity ! 
It is also not always easy to be at once spontaneous and 

watchful in our conversation. 

* 

It is of the highest importance that we learn to dis- 
tinguish right from wrong wherever and whenever it 
exists, without distinction or favoritism of persons. 
No one deserves to possess any influence which is not 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 1 65 

founded on his or her personal worth of character, and 
that wholly irrespective of their position either in the 
world or in the Church. 

It is quite easy for the grossest minds to profess an 
assent to any formulary of belief, but it is a purified 
heart only which seeks to mold its passions and preju- 
dices, its feelings and habits, by the holy and elevating 

precepts of Jesus. 

* 

There are times when we derive strength from 
communication of thought ; there are times when we 
receive it from silence. 

I BELIEVE we cannot always have our minds equally 
alive to religious emotion, but we ca7i always have our 
souls under the predominating and governing influence 
of religious principle. 

The burden of my soul is much more that those 
already in the Christian Church should improve and 
advance in their Christian character, than to draw into 
it those who are at present unconnected therewith. 

The great ;;2d?r^/ teachings and truths of Christianity 
commend themselves to all hearts and minds, and are 
the same under all its forms. Not so theological teach- 
ings. The conscientious Pedobaptist is generally 



l66 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

desirous to dedicate his infant child to God in baptism, 
and in some extreme cases seems actually uneasy if 
that ceremony be neglected; the equally conscien- 
tious Baptist would shrink from submitting his young 
offspring to such an observance, and probably might 
even regard it as a relic of Papacy; while both, if they 
have imbibed aught of real Christianity, alike desire 
for their children goodness, temperance, meekness 
and uprightness, as fruits of the Spirit of God. 

There is a medium to be observed, and that not 
always easily decided upon, between that sflence which 
may be taken for acquiescence, under the enunciation 
of sentiments we disapprove, and that which is held 
simply because all controversy would be wasted and 
useless. Yet there are occasions when silence would 

be sin. 

* 

* * 

Each individual friend calls forth in us, I think, a 
special affection which can never be wholly transferred 
to any other friend, however loved and valued ; yet the 
space in our hearts left vacant by the death of a be- 
loved one can, in a measure, generally be so far filled 
up as to prevent our lives from becoming desolate by 

their removal. 

* 

Prayer must not be allowed to sink into reverie, or 
it will cease to be profitable ; yet it vtay sometimes 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 1 6/ 

gently subside into meditation, and even help us in so 
doing. 

I HAVE sometimes been profoundly shocked to hear 
some individuals vehemently lifting their prayers for 
the "conversion of sinners," whose characters in daily 
life were such that it seemed to me they needed _;?ri-/ to 
pray for the conversion of themselves. 

Very few people can be trusted to delineate, faith- 
fully and truthfully, the characters, or to give a cor- 
rect representation of the principles and opinions, of 
those they dislike or disapprove. Prejudice is very 
apt to color their statements, even unconsciously to 

themselves. 

* 

Though the spirit of prayer and praise will doubt- 
less be habitual in heaven, the direct act of either can 
scarcely, by any possibility, be incessant and unin- 
terrupted. 

* 
* * 

We are apt to speak of ourselves as if the body were 
our sinful part, and the mind our heavenly part, where- 
as the truth is, that the body does not and cannot sin 
except through the inclinations of the mhid. The 
terms " flesh and spirit " do not truly represent body 
and mind; they simply denote the baser or lower and 
the higher or purer part of our being. If we rightly 



1 68 DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

govern, regulate and subdue the former and faithfully 
cherish and develop the latter, we shall thus attain the 
true meaning of the Apostle when he said, " I keep 
under my body and bring it into subjection." 

It is too much the habit with some professedly 
religious teachers to undervalue the holy and heavenly 
virtues which our blessed Saviour inculcated in His 
Divine teachings. How often, alas ! have I heard 
those Christian graces of character, on which that 
blessed Saviour has specially pronounced His precious 
benediction as proving the true claim to discipleship, 
lightly spoken of, and almost denounced, as ^^ mere 
morality r thus unconsciously libeling that great 
compendium of His instructions, the Sermon on the 
Mount. Let me never QVQnseem to join in this sense- 
less and wretched cant. Let me remember that every 
act of pure morality is an act of obedience to God, and 
that if we were all true moralists according to the 
standard of Jesus, we could not fail to be Christians 
in deed and in truth. 

* * 
Observation continually shows us that honesty of 
purpose by no means insures correctness of judgment. 

How wonderful, how marvelous a thing is the eye I 
That through the medium of a little instrument not 
an inch in diameter we should be able to take in and 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. 1 69 

comprehend the forms and relative sizes of buildings, 
mountains, ships, etc., which, although thousands of 
times larger than itself, are yet distinctly represented 
to our minds through this amazing little camera ! — that 
we can thus form accurate images, not only of things 
near, but also of things remote from us, in figure and 
in color ! These little eyes destroyed, the whole 
visible world of nature and of art is blotted out to us 
forever ! 

* 

Perhaps it may be profitable sometimes to try to 
look on faiths and opinions differing from our own 
from their standpoint if possible, that we may better 
know how they are accustomed to view things which 
we receive differently from themselves. 

We do not see or hear the dew descend upon the 
earth, but we know what it has done day by day, by its 
results on the face of all nature. Thus if true religion 
reis^ns in the heart it will show itself in the conduct of 
the life, just as surely as the dew from heaven makes 
manifest its work upon the earth ; and it will do this 
without our making any great and constant proclama- 
tion of it. 

The difference is wide between a mere personal 
distaste and a moral disapproval. 



I/O DETACHED THOUGHTS. 

How wonderful that a thought, that impalpable 
thing, can be expressed by sounds of the voice, by- 
strokes of the pen ; can be made perceptible to the 
eye and tangible to the ear! can be caught, caged, 
and transmitted over the world ! 

Strange as it may seem, the sufferings of the mind 
from an accusing conscience are by no means always 
in proportion to its moral culpability ; its agony from 
remorse is not invariably according to its guilt. The 
heart of a habitual transgressor is often very much 
hardened, while one of a purer life has tender sensi- 
bilities, and frequently experiences great and often unde- 
served misery from the commission of an almost in- 
voluntary error. The more carefully we cherish and 
cultivate tenderness of conscience, the more acutely 
sensible does that conscience become to the smallest 
delinquencies. The general result is that the most 
faithful conscience is the most susceptible of suffering, 
and ofttimes keenly grieves over errors or mistakes 
which a less carefully nurtured one would fail even to 
perceive. 

Certain modes of expression originally used for 
the purpose of conveying a religious thought, by con- 
stant iteration sink down into set phrases and a kind 
of catch-words, which gradually lose all their primi- 
tive sacredness and consequent value, and at last 



DETACHED THOUGHTS. I /I 

come to be heard without communicating any really 
distinct ideas. 

When I go into the dwellings of the poor and see 
their scanty modicum of daily comforts, and sometimes 
even of necessaries, I am ready to return home feeling 
as if the want of a meal, a garment or a fire were 
almost the only privations worth bewailing. Yet it is 
not so; the heart and mind have wants as well as the 
body. There are needs and cravings of our nature 
besides the physical ones for food and clothing, and any 
one habitually surrounded by social uncongenialities, 
even though possessing pecuniary plenty, cannot but 
be sensible of them. 

In proportion to an extreme zeal for theological 
opinions is, ordinarily, an indifference toward practical 
virtues of the Christian character, and a disposition to 
depreciate their importance. Where exists an excess- 
ive earnestness respecting creeds and theories of re- 
ligion, there is usually a proportionate undervaluing of 
actual and real goodness. Do not all history and all 
observation attest this to be true ? and alas ! it is as 
mournful as it is true ! 

No ERRORS of mere opinion appear to me dangerous 
which do not weaken the sense of moral accountability 
in those who hold them; but I have no abiding faith 
in any virtues which are not based on a recognition of 
responsibility to God as our Creator. 



''ALONE, YET NOT ALONE." 



ALL, all alone ! No cherished kindred near thee, 
No pleasant home or fireside of thine own, 
No tender voice at morn or eve to cheer thee : 
Thou art alone I 

All, all alone ! Low in the graveyard sleeping, 

Lie father, mother, friends, thy loved, thy own ; 
Whilst thou, still left, fond mem'ry's vigil keeping. 
Art all alone ! 

No, not alone. They have but gone before thee; 

The home now theirs, one day shall be thy own ; 
Their love a happier world shall yet restore thee, 
No more alone. 

No, not alone. Thy faithful Lord is near thee, 

He watches o'er thee from His heavenly throne ; 
And while His smiles, His words. His comforts cheer 
thee, 

Art thou alone ? 

Oh ! not alone ! Short is the night of weeping. 
Soon shall sweet heaven for earthly ill atone; 
Sowing in tears, yet still in joy oft reaping, 
Thou'rt not alone ! 
(172) 



HAVE I BEEN SO LONG TIME WITH 
THEE?" 



Have I been so long time with 5'ou, and yet hast thou not known me? — John xiv. 9. 

HAVE I so long been with thee, yet unknown ? 
Thy dull heart feeling not that I was near ? 
Thou need'st not wait to see me on my throne, 

Nor search through heights or depths, for I am here t 

I have been with thee in thy happy hours, 
When little joys sprang up, and pleasant flowers, 
And friends stood by, and life was full and bright, 
And there was none to grieve thee or affright ; 
In all that cheer'd, in all that bless'd thy lot, 
I have been with thee, though thou knew'st it not 1 

I have been with thee when the billows rose. 

Tossing thy frail bark on a sea of woes ; 

When sinking 'mid the waves with strength so small, 

I mark'd thy struggles, and I heard thy call ; 

Child, whom I have oft tried, yet ne'er forgot, 

I have been with thee, though thou knew'st it not ! 

When some poor wayfarer of earth comes by, 
Toiling and tottering in his misery, 

(173) 



1/4 "have I BEEN SO LONG TIME WITH THEE?" 

Let him not pass unnoticed ; do not care 

To ask his name, his merits : / am there ! 

The kindly smile thou profferest, / can see ; 

The little cup thou givest, is to Me. 

Oh ! bless him with good deed, and accents mild, 

For thou art doing it to Me, my child ! 

If by the couch of pain thou sittest down. 
Where aching sickness, want and sorrow frown. 
And sadly feel'st how poor thou art, and weak, 
Strong words of peace and comforting to speak, 
Courage ! for /will guide thy voice, thy prayer; 
Dost thou not feel My presence ? — / am there ! 

Oh, veiled Guest ! whom we do fail to see 
Often, while Thou art standing by our side. 

Grant me a- clearer vision ! Give to me 

A purer heart, redeem'd from self and pride; 

A lowly heart, a heart of love and prayer, 

That I may seek Thee, meet Thee, everyzvhere. 




''IS IT I? 



The indigent world might be clothed from the trimmings of the vain. 

— Goldsmith's Vicar of Wakefield. 

SISTER, mother, wife or maid. 
Hast thou e'er the value weigh'd 
Of the decorative care 
Spent to make thy person fair ? 
Thou, that call'st thyself a child 
Of the Saviour meek and mild, 
Think'st thou how His poor might be 
Comforted and blest by thee. 
Would thy self-indulgent heart 
Choose the self-denying part. 
On the garniture of Dress 
Lavishing a little less ? 

Oh ! but this is hard (you say). 
Things like these to cast away ! 
If the heart be all my care, 
Can it matter what I wear ? 

Yes ; for if with earnest mind, 
Purpose true and feelings kind, 
(175) 



176 "is it I?" 

Something thou would'st spare and gain 
From '' the trimmings of the vain," 
Gath'ring round thy form and face 
Less of drap'ry, plume and lace, 
Ah ! what precious store might rise 
E'en from this small sacrifice ! 
That, which scarcely counts on such, 
Giv'n to Charity were much. 
It might make the suffering glad. 
Send them from thee warm'd and clad, 
While there's nothing lost to theCy 
Save a little vanity ! 
Form and color, true, are nought, 
But the time, the pains, the thought, 
. And the money thou dost spend 
All for an unworthy end, 
If the heart were " all thy care," 
Conscience, surely, could not bear. 
Which is nobler, then ? to take 
Christian ground for conscience' sake, 
Or to tread the beaten way. 
Decking this poor earthly clay 
All in Fashion's frippery, 
Lest thou should'st " peculiar " be ? 

As my heart within me burned, 
Thus to speak my bosom yearned. 
Haply, had I silent been, 
Utter silence had been sin. 



"SILVER AND GOLD HAVE I NONE/' 



Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. — Acts hi. 6. 

SILVER and gold thou ownest not; 
Yet hath thy dowry been forgot 
By Him who sends as best He sees, 
And wisely every lot decrees ? 
Nay ; to each heart of finer mold 
God giveth more than gems or gold; 
And thee hath graciously endued 
With some blest power of doing good. 
The bounties of the heart may fall 
In drops of blessing upon all 
Whom thou dost meet on Life's highway 
From hour to hour, from day to day. 
Be but the holy purpose thine 
To leave " no day without a line " 
Of record that thy soul doth yearn 
The wealth of Christian love to learn, 
And oh ! thy daily deeds shall bear 
, Some humble witness to thy prayer! 

Is there no drooping sufferer near, 
Whom gentle word of thine could cheer? 

12 (177) 



78 *' SILVER AND GOLD HAVE I NONE." 

Is there no heart might ache the less 
For something thou could'st do to bless ? 
None, whom thy little skill might reach 
To help, or animate, or teach ? 
None, whom thy guidance might allure 
To love the holy, good and pure ? 
None, unto whom thy life might show 
A heavenward aim 'mid things below? 
If but a little child draw nigh 
To meet the welcome of thine eye, 
Or the poor brute, to whom unknown 
Are words, discern thy kindly tone, 
That day shall be no blank to thee. 
In Time or in Eternity. 

Be ever thine th' unselfish will 
Intent on loving-kindness still ; 
And meekly, calmly lay aside 
Thy leisure, indolence or pride, 
So thou mayst joy or good confer 
Upon Life's lowliest traveler. 
Oh ! think on Him who trod below 
The scenes of human want and woe, 
Only to save, and serve, and bless 
Earth's countless children of distress ! 
Before Him kneel; devoutly pray 
Thy selfishness may melt away. 
And humbled, contrite, weeping, plead 
That thou mayst follow Christ indeed. 



"IN HIS NAME. 



WRITTEN AFTER READING A LITTLE BOOK BEARING THIS TITLE. 

HOW often cloud-wreaths gather 
Round the disciple's way ! 
How many anxious doubtings 
His onward footsteps stay ! 
How many timid moments 
Of self-distrust and fear, 
As the great question presses, 
" What am / doing here ?" 

Thou art so weak, thou sayest, 

A bruised, trembling reed, 
God asks not thy poor labor. 

Of it He hath no need; 
The little tkou canst proffer 

Seems scarce worth bringing in 
To God's great harvest-gathering 

Of storehouse and of bin. 

Yet pause, for low and gently 
An inward voice replies, 
(179) 



l8o " IN HIS NAME." 

Out of that very weakness 

Thy inward strength shall rise ; 

And thy dear Lord doth need thee, 
Though feeble be thy frame ; 

Go, therefore ; but go only 
" In His Name." 

What though it often grieve thee 

Thou canst so little do ! 
Thy will, thy wish, so mighty, 

Thy powers, thy gifts, so few ! 
If on thy bosom's altar 

Burneth Love's holy flame, 
Go thou, for thou art going 

" In His Name." 

Oh 1 thought of joy uplifting, 

To all the faint and weak. 
That girdeth up the spirit 

New impulses to seek ! 
What is this poor world's suffrage ? 

Oh ! what its praise or blame, 
If only He doth send thee 

" In His Name ?" 

If in thy little duties 
Of helpfulness and love 

Thou ever seek the wisdom 
Which Cometh from above. 



" IN HIS NAME.' 



i8i 



If daily thou art asking, 

With purpose fixed and true, 
Lord ! for earth's many sufferers 

What wilt Thou have me do ? 
Then thou, who frail and fearful, 

No strength from ^^^ canst claim, 
May'st work, for thou art working 

" In His Name." 




SPIRIT. 



OH! what is Spirit? Who can tell 
Aught of the undefinable? 
Who shall explore its nature, source, 
Or follow its departing course? 

What made, this morn, a little child 
Smile, when upon its face I smiled ? 
Why did another fondly "twine, 
Unasked, a trustful hand in mine ?" 
What makes the honest dog draw nigh, 
To meet the welcome of my eye ? 
Why, but that Spirit, within these. 
My spirit answers, feels and sees ? 

I had a little darling bird, 
That my fond care and kindness stirred ; 
Why didst thou, birdie, child of air. 
So joy to have my love and care ? 
'Twas the Invisible in thee 
Met the Invisible in me. 
One morn its little eye was bright, 
(182) 



SPIRIT. 183 

It twittered in its happy flight ; 
To feed upon my hand it came, 
And chirped if I but called its name; 
The next, all cold it lay, and still, 
No motion left, no voice, no will. 
We said the little bird was dead ; 
But whatixom that small frame had fled ? 
Where was that strange, mysterious thing 
That moved its chirp and urged its wing ? 
That sparkled in its sprightly eye, 
And seemed all joy when I was nigh ? 
That vital being gave the whole ? 
What will you call it ?— Life or Soul ? 

I had a friend, a precious one, 

Who was to me Heaven's benison ; 

I watched her quivering, fluttering breath. 

When that came on which we call Death. 

Cold as my little bird then lay 

All that was left of pallid clay ; 

Alike from bird and friend had gone 

That which affection fastened on ; 

What was that nameless, viewless thine 

That vanished from our questioning? 

And oh ! can this impalpable 

Which thus in man and brute doth dwell, 

This, which through nerve and fiber lives, 

And joy, and pain, and will-power gives, 

This all-impelling, quickening fire — 



1 84 



SPIRIT. 



Can it, in aught that breathes, expire ? 

Oh ! narrow thinker ! to deny 

To brute Life, Immortality ! 

Shallow the reasoning that would deem 

My faith but fancy's baseless dream. 

Little our bounded view can see 

Of Being's mighty mystery ; 

Yet sure on Nature's page we read, 

In lessons above human creed. 

Truths, from which deeper thought doth learn 

That Spirit ever is eterne. 




719 



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